


College is Such a Waste

by GabrielQuill



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Boyfriends, College, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Romance, Stony - Freeform, Tony Stark Has Issues, Young Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6823801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GabrielQuill/pseuds/GabrielQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tony, look, you're drunk, okay?" Steve said as he tried pushing his roommate away from him.<br/>"Yeah, but I know what I'm doing." Tony tried leaning in again to kiss him, the stench of alcohol was strong on his breath.<br/>Steve quickly stood up from the bed where they were both sitting which caused Tony to face plant right into his pillow. "You're drunk," Steve repeated.<br/>"I thought this was what you wanted," Tony slurred into the pillow before slowly lifting his head up. "I thought you wanted me but you're rejecting me?"<br/>"I'm sorry, Tony," Steve whispered before he grabbed his blue jacket that was sitting on the desk then walking out of the dorm room. Leaving Tony sitting on the bed alone, confused and hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve, a twenty-one year old who had just recently decided to break out from his three year retirement from school and enrolled into Holten College. He was proud that he was accepted since that was a tough college to get into. Although, while he was in high school he was a straight A student and his state tests had a high score, but Steve couldn't help but think that a factor of his enrollment was due to the fact that his father had recently passed away while on duty. When he heard the news, Steve wanted to join the military right away, but to be honest, he didn't really know why he wanted to all of a sudden. Maybe he wanted to show his mother that he was just as strong as his father or maybe it was for another reason. Before Steve could even have the chance to enlist, his mother had begged him to not go through with it, saying that she didn't want to risk losing her only child, and that's when Steve decided that he wanted to go to college instead.

The college campus was quite a way from home, so Steve had to take up on the option of using the colleges' dorms. Not that Steve minded that he had to live in the dorms, it was just going to be a big change from living at home. It broke his heart to see that his mother was crying before he left, but she had reassured him over and over that they were tears of happiness. The way Steve looked at this, he wanted to make his mother proud of him and doing this was going to do just that.

Steve let out a nervous sigh when he parked his red 1987 Honda Prelude in the dorms parking lot next to the building that was going to be his. He stared at the building for a few minutes before turning off his car and unbuckling his seat belt. It was time to get inside.

He grabbed the two boxes and the backpack that had his stuff in them and walked up to the building. Someone held the door opened for him, he nodded his thanks and walked down the hallway. Thankfully his room was on the first floor and didn't have to carry the heavy boxes up the stairs. According to the woman who works with the dorms, Steve was going to have a roommate, well, that was going to be fun. 

Steve set the boxes down next to the door of his new room and unlocked it. He was starting to get nervous again when he walked into the room, he didn't see anybody else there. It was a Sunday and Steve did expect his roommate to be there, unless he may have had a morning class or something. Maybe he was at work if he had a job. 

The door slowly closed behind Steve which he didn't pay any mind to since he assumed that it was the type of door that closed on its own if left opened too long. After he set the boxes back down, someone came up behind him and jumped onto his back, causing Steve to let out a yelp of surprise. He tried fighting off whoever was attacking him, but they leaped over his back and landed on the old, beat up couch. Steve looked shocked and confused at what just happened.

"Hey, what's up?" The man who had to be his roommate greeted Steve with a smirk on his face. 

He had to be only a year or two younger than Steve was. He had brown hair and big brown eyes to match and it looked like he was starting to grow a beard. The smirk he was wearing gave Steve the idea that he was always causing mischief. He was wearing a large, red hoodie with a AC/DC shirt underneath it and black jeans.

"What'd you do that for?" Steve said as he was readjusting his shirt. 

"My name's Anthony Stark, but everyone calls me Tony." He ignored Steve's question, reaching down to the cooler next to the couch and took out a beer. "Want one?" He held out another can of beer. 

"No, thanks, Tony." 

"Suit yourself," Tony said with a shrug when he opened up his own beer can. "What about you? What's your name?"

"Uh," Steve stammered.

"I don't think your name is 'uh.' I mean, if it is I'm so sorry to hear that-"

"Steve," he said quickly, "Steve Rogers." He held out his hand to Tony who looked confused at the formality.

"I don't like touching people I don't know," Tony said as he stood up. "Okay, look. Your room is right there." He pointed at the closed door that was across the room. "Mine is right here." He jabbed a thumb behind his shoulder to the opened door room that looked extremely messy. "Don't touch anything in my room, because I don't need you going to the hospital because I wasn't here to supervise you."

Steve's eyes went wide. "Hospital? What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess I should explain. No, it's not drugs if that's what you're thinking. I mean, I _could_ make drugs if I wanted- you know what, this is starting to sound bad. I'm here for physics and engineering, so I have a lot hardware stuff laying around which could be, in fact, dangerous and I don't want you messing that up."

"Er, okay. I'll keep that in mind."

"Don't be shy about taking anything either, but the rule is, if you eat the last of the chocolate you gotta go out and buy more. Also, don't worry about me getting in your way, apparently I'm always locked up in my room according to my friends. Which honestly I don't think is true, but Nat and Bruce haven't steered me wrong once."

 


	2. Chapter 2

The first night being Tony's roommate was just exactly what Steve was told what it would be like, Tony had been held up in his room most of the night, he only came out once to grab some junk food from on top of the fridge. It was too hard for Steve to find something to cook in his new dorm room since all Tony had to eat was chips, Ramen noodles and other various junk food items. So he ended up going to the local grocery store to get the ingredients to make spaghetti. Even after making it he knocked on Tony's door to ask if he wanted any but all Tony said was that he was busy. Well, what was he going to expect? While he was cooking his dinner he noticed Tony's class schedule was pinned up on the fridge and it turned out that they had the same morning physics class. That would surely be interesting.

\- - -

Steve's alarm clock on his phone started blaring at him at 8:30 in the morning. Since their physics class at 9:00 in the morning he figured that would give them enough time to get around and make it to class. Although, Steve had the impression that Tony was the type of person to always oversleep and with the tinkering he was doing with the stuff in his room he wouldn't be too surprised. 

He swung his feet over the bed to start getting ready, but he thought maybe it would be a good idea to see if Tony was awake yet or not. When walking out of his room, he peered into Tony's room, he didn't want to walk into his room without permission. There he saw Tony sprawled out on the messy floor with the TV lighting up the room with early morning infomercials and a screwdriver laying across his chest. He must have passed out while working last night. 

"Tony?" Steve called out to him as he was knocking his fist on the door frame.

Tony snorted awake and sat up with a piece of paper stuck to his forehead. "Wh-what? What's going on?" He grumbled after the piece of paper that had his notes written down on fell into his lap. He looked at his watch and was surprised at the time. "Why did you wake me up so early?"

"Early?" Steve repeated mostly to himself. "What do you mean early? You have physics class at nine."

"How'd you know that?" 

"You have it up on the refrigerator, I have that class too."

Tony groaned as he forced himself to stand up, his whole body ached from laying on that uncomfortable floor, but it was something that he was used to. "Yeah, I'm never there on time," he said with a smirk as he was rubbing his right eye. "I normally drift in at around 9:30 or 10:00."

"Aren't you worried about all the stuff you'll miss?"

Tony shrugged. "Not really, no. Even though I'm always late, probably miss a lot of instruction time and all that jazz, I'm still top student in the class. Trust me, Rogers, science is kinda my thing."

Did he really just call me by my last name? Steve thought to himself as Tony walked past him to get to the kitchen. From the fridge he grabbed a Monster Energy Drink, popped the cap off and started to down it in almost one sitting. Steve couldn't believe he almost drank that in one go, he would imagine that drinking it all at once would give a person a heart attack.

"Want some?" Tony held out the large can of energy drink to Steve but he politely refused. Tony scoffed. "Wasn't gonna give you some anyway." He put on his red-tinted sunglasses with a smirk.

\- - -

Tony showed Steve around the campus a bit before they started heading to class, well, at least Steve had an idea of where his other classes would be located at. 

When they walked into the room, the teacher who was sitting behind his front desk, Mr. Richardson had looked up to see Tony walking in on time. That was a sight for sore eyes.

"Well, well, well," Mr. Richardson started to say, sitting back in his old, beat up office chair. "Isn't this a surprise to see you here on time, Mr. Stark. I think that's the first time in... Well, ever."

"Thanks for the words of encouragement," Tony said sarcastically. He took off his sunglasses and hooked them onto his Ramones shirt. "This is Rogers, he's with me." He nodded to Steve who was standing awkwardly while they were having their conversation. 

"Uh, Steve, actually," he corrected.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Rogers. C'mon." 

He walked them both up the row to the very back where Tony normally sits. He sat down next to another guy who was wearing glasses, wearing a purple button up shirt and dress pants. Steve sat at the end of the aisle next to Tony. 

"Hey," Tony greeted him but the man didn't look up at him, in fact, he didn't even realize that someone was talking to him. "Bruce?" Tony tried again, but still nothing. He started snapping his fingers. "Bruce. Earth to Bruce." He did a high pitched whistle which seem to work. 

"God, Tony, don't do that. You know I hate that sound," he said, leaning back in his seat. 

"Right, whatever." Tony rolled his eyes. "Hey, look, this is Rogers." He nodded to Steve. 

He groaned. "It's  _Steve,_ Tony. You know that."

"A piece of advice," Bruce started to tell Steve, "the more you complain about something the more he'll continue to piss you off."

"Noted."

"That's not even true!"

Bruce leaned over Tony's desk and held his hand out to Steve. "I'm Bruce Banner," he introduced himself politely. 

"Steve Rogers," he replied while shaking his hand.

"Okay, okay, everyone off my desk." Tony used his backpack to push their arms from his table. "Oh! Here, you'll need this." He opened up his backpack and plopped a physics textbook on Steve's desk. "You're welcome."

"What? You don't need this?" 

Tony shook his head as he leaned back in his desk chair, kicking his feet up on the desk in front of him. "Nah, trust me when I tell you I'm a master at science. I haven't done my homework once, still have over 100%."

"One of these days, Tony, you're gonna slip," Bruce pointed out.

"Am not."

"It's probability."

The three of them stopped talking when the teacher announced that class was now starting and for everyone to take out a notebook to take notes in. Of course, everyone did what he said but Tony. It was a wonder for Steve that Tony was passing any class at all with that attitude. 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

During the afternoon break that the entire school had, Steve was sitting on the bench just outside the cafe/lunch room where Tony had told him they would meet up at. It's been about fifth teen minutes and Steve was starting to get anxious. He was wondering if maybe Tony had just set him up to go there and not actually show up, because, to be honest, Steve could actually see Tony doing that. But why would he do that? Maybe because he was the new kid? More than likely.

Steve stood up from the bench that he was sitting in, flung his book bag over his shoulder and started walked back to his dorm room.

"Where're you going, Rogers?" He heard Tony call from behind him. Turning around, he saw him standing there wearing his red tinted sunglasses with Bruce and three other people who Steve assumed were his friends that he briefly talked about the other night. "You can't walk out on us, we were just about to show you our courtyard."

"Your courtyard?" Steve questioned as he walked over to Tony and his group. "What do you mean?"

"C'mon, we'll show you."

The group of six walked through the cafe, a lot of people were trying to get Tony to stop so they could talk but he walked passed them without saying anything to them. Steve didn't realize how popular his roommate was. He was also hoping that Tony was going to introduce him to his friends since it was an awkward trip with nobody talking. At first, Steve didn't realize this, but the red headed woman and one of the guys were holding hands. Obviously they were a couple.

Tony used his left shoulder to push open the door.

"Welcome to our courtyard," Tony had announced proudly with a smile on his face. "This is where we meet up to study and stuff."

"You don't study, you idiot," the red head said with a flat tone of voice.

"Don't  throw facts at me-Oh! Right!" Tony clasped his hands together as he spun on his heels to look at them. "Guys, this is Rogers, he's my new house pet. Rogers, that's Natasha, her charming boyfriend Clint, and that's Thor. He's an exchange student or whatever. And you already know Bruce."

"I'm not..." Steve stopped in mid sentence. He remembered what Bruce had told him in Physics earlier, so he decided to keep his mouth shut about it. "I'm Steve," he told them.

"Man, you got Tony as a roommate? I'm praying for ya," Clint said, slowly shaking his head with a low whistle. Tony shot a glare at Clint who just shrugged in response.

"I am sure that the Mechanic is not as bad as you claim," Thor stated. He had an unexpected accent and his voice was so deep that it boomed through the courtyard. 

"Thanks, Thor."

"So, what are you in for?" Nat asked when she sat down on the bench next to Clint, still holding his hand.

"You make it sound like college is a waste of time," Steve pointed out which caused Nat to just shrug. "I'm learning more about American Military History then get my teaching degree so I can teach the subject."

"That would be totally sweet!" Clint said with a smile on his face. "Somewhat same thing, gonna teach archery, but didn't know you had to take some courses in college to actually do that." Clint shrugged. "So here I am."

"Bruce want's to be a chemist, what a nerd," Tony said.

"Aren't you going into science stuff too?" Nat questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, yeah, but-"

"Then shut your mouth."

Tony put his hands up defensively. "Damn, sorry."

"I am here to study about the American Educational System," Thor started to explain but looked down at the ground, slowly shaking his head. "So far it is not good."

"Agreed." Tony pulled a beer can out of his backpack and opened it.

"You're nineteen, Tony, how the hell did you get that?" Bruce demanded.

"I have my ways, so don't you worry about it." He took a sip of it before taking out his iPhone. "Before I forget, give me your number, Rogers."

"Um, okay..." Steve said as he took out his flip phone.

"What the hell is that?!" 

"My phone?"

"Leave him alone, Tony," Nat defended again with an eye roll. It was clear she had put up with Tony's shit for a long time. "But give me his number too." She took out her Android. "We'll add him to our group chat."

Tony scoffed. "Well, I mean if his phone can handle that type of thing. I'll probably buy you a better one." Tony's phone started vibrating to tell him that he had a text message. After he read it, he looked up at the group then put his phone back in his back pocket. "Gotta scram. Pepper needs help with her science project. See ya losers later." 

Nobody said anything as they watched Tony leave their courtyard, although Steve was confused. 

"What did he mean by that? That he would buy me a better one?"

"You have a flip phone, dude. Nobody has one of those anymore."

"Steve, he's rich. Didn't you know that? Buying someone a phone to him is like a middle class person buying a candy bar. It doesn't affect his finances." Nat looked at the phone that Steve was still holding onto. "If I were you, I would take him up on that offer."


	4. Chapter 4

By the end of the school day Steve was exhausted. When he got back into his and Tony's dorm room, he threw his book bag down next to the refrigerator letting out an exhausted sigh. He was finally happy to be done with the school day, he just wanted to kick back and relax. Steve plopped down on the old, beat up couch and closed his eyes to relax, but it wasn't long until he heard a lot banging sound coming from Tony's room followed by him yelling "dammit!" It caused Steve to shoot straight up on the couch, his eyes wide opened from surprise. 

He walked over to Tony's slightly opened bedroom door, but didn't go inside until first knocking on the door frame again.

"Tony?" Steve called from the other side of the door. "You alright?" He grabbed the doorknob and slowly opened the door, preparing himself in case he was told to not come in. But since he didn't say anything, Steve walked into the room. He saw Tony on the messy floor, as usual, but he was holding his right hand and pressing it to his chest, but since Tony had his back to Steve he couldn't get a good look at what was going on. "You okay?" He repeated.

Tony nodded as he stood up. "I'm fine, just fine." He turned around to face Steve. "Just a 'minor' burn," he said with a shrug.

"Minor? Let me see that." Steve forcibly grabbed Tony's right hand, causing him to let out a small yelp but tried to play it off as if it was a cough. Steve saw a second degree burn that covered Tony's entire palm of his hand. "This is minor to you? What the hell happened?"

"I made a teeny tiny fire."

"For God's sake..."

Tony snatched his hand away from his roommate. "It'll be fine, alright? Just need to bandage it up." He turned back around and lightly pushed things around on the floor with his foot. "Should have bandages around here somewhere..."

"Bandages won't take care of it."

"It's just a burn, Rogers relax, okay? It'll go away eventually." Steve rolled his eyes before grabbing Tony's arm and practically started to drag him to the bathroom with him complaining the entire short way. "Dude, I didn't realize how strong you were."

"Sit," he commanded, pointing at the wall of the bathtub. 

"You're bossy..." He mumbled but doing what Steve told him to do.

"Stay here." Steve walked out of the bathroom but returned seconds later with a large, clear empty bowl. "This should help," he explained, filling the large bowl with cold water from the sink. 

Tony groaned, leaning back but almost fell into the tub, luckily he caught himself before it was too late. "Rogers, like I said, it's not a big deal! All I need are bandages..." Once the bowl was filled, Steve set the bowl next to Tony on the tub. "What the hell am I suppose to do with this?" 

"If you soak your hand in cold water for fifth-teen minutes it should take some of the pain away." 

"Oh, no, no. I think I'm goo-" Steve put Tony's hand in the bowl of cold water forcibly, causing him to yelp loudly. "Goddammit, Rogers! That hurts!" 

"But it's helping, right?" He let go of his hand which was kept inside the bowl. 

"No, it's-" Tony paused for a moment, looking down at his hand. "Actually, yes a bit." When Tony saw the little 'I told you so' look on Steve's face he cleared his throat. "But I'm sure that my bandages would've worked just fine too." 

Steve rolled his eyes but didn't say anything, he realized that Tony was a person with a big ego and didn't want anyone else but him to be right so he kept his mouth shut. 

After fifth-teen minutes passed, Tony moved his hand from the bowl with water dripping to the tile floor. 

Before Steve was about to take the bowl away Tony stopped him. "Hey, can I see your phone for a second? I don't think I put my number in there right." 

"Uh, sure."

When he handed his phone over to him, Tony dropped it in the water. 

"Tony!"

"Oops, looks like you need a new phone, huh?"

"Urgh..." He saw that he had a smirk on his face when moving the bowl off of the bathtub. Steve grabbed a washcloth and soaked it with cold water then mixed soap into it until it was lathered in it. "Okay, this may hurt but it'll be sure it won't get infected."

"Okay, Doctor Rogers."

He held his hand out to Steve who started carefully washing the palm of his hand. Tony kept squirming where he sat due to the pain of the rough washcloth rubbing against the second degree burn. Steve had to actually hold down Tony's entire arm so he could get the burn nice and clean. Along with the washing some skin was starting to peal off from the burn which was kinda freaking Tony out since he never seen that happen before. Tony let out a sigh of relief when Steve stood up to ring out the used washcloth. 

Tony looked at the palm of his hand, taking note of all the skin that had been pealed off. "Was that suppose to happen?"

"Yes, that's normal." Steve started to pat the burn dry with a new, clean washcloth. "Now we can put your bandages on it."

"Finally..." 

Steve sat back down next to Tony again, he put antibiotic ointment on a large piece of gauze then wrapped it around Tony's palm before unwrapping the bandage roll. For some reason, Tony couldn't help but blush while watching Steve fixing up his burn. Was he having an anxiety attack? Something didn't feel right in Tony's stomach, something that he had never felt before and didn't understand what it was. He just wanted Steve to stop so he could sulk back into his room to try and analyze this feeling. 

Just as Steve finished wrapping it up, Tony quickly stood up, holding his right hand. "Okay, yeah, thanks," Tony said quickly, keeping his face down so Steve couldn't see that it was all red from him blushing. Steve watched in confusion as he watched Tony walk out of the bathroom and back into his room, slamming his door behind him.

What was his problem? Steve thought but just shrugged it off. 

On the other side of the door, Tony had his back to the door and slowly slide down until he was sitting on the floor. With the pain in his hand and the weird anxiety feeling he had going on in his chest he didn't know what was going on. Maybe it got infected and I'm dying, Tony thought holding up his bandaged hand and looking at it. No, that's stupid, can you get anymore ridiculous, Anthony? He thought again. 

There was a small shuffling underneath the junk all over his floor. Tony had his face leaning on the palm of his left hand that was sitting on his knee, watching the small robot pulling itself out of the trash on the floor. The robot was only about nine inches tall, had two wheels to get around, two arms, and a head with small glowing blue eyes.

"I recommend that you clean your bedroom, mister Stark," the robot told Tony in a human tone of voice but it was small and tiny.

"Yeah, I know, JARVIS." He waved off his robot by looking up at the window. "I haven't seen you in a while. Where've you been?" A small smile made its way on Tony's face, knowing damn well that JARVIS was trapped underneath all the junk for about a week.

"Honestly, sir, I've been your friend for four-teen years and you still don't care when I get lost."

"I cared, I just been busy." JARVIS bumped into Tony's foot which actually did hurt a bit. "Ow! What's your issue?" 

"I have been alerted of an intruder, sir." JARVIS turned one of his arms into a small taser that was actually quite powerful if used on. 

"Oh, right. No, JARVIS, it's okay. That's Steve, he's our new roommate." 

"Roommate?" JARVIS' voice picked up, turning to look at Tony. He started to run himself into the door to tell Tony to let him out. Sometimes JARVIS acted like a small puppy rather than a robot. 

"Relax." Tony stood up and opened the door to let JARVIS out into the living. He wheeled himself out there quickly to see Steve sitting on the couch, watching TV. 

JARVIS wheeled up to Steve. "I am JAR-" Before he could finish his sentence, he let out a gasp when Steve threw the remote at him but he managed to avoid it. "What is the matter?!" 

"What the hell is that?!" Steve shouted, looking up at Tony who was standing in his doorway. 

"Well, if you would've let him finish, his name is JARVIS. He's my robot. I made him when I was five years old. Actually, I think he was the first thing I ever made. I wanted to name him Optimus Prime, but he insisted that he wanted to be called JARVIS so yeah. That's him."

"Oh, sorry about that, JARVIS," Steve apologized with a small smile on his face.

"It is quite alright, mister Rogers. It is a pleasure to have you here as it seems mister Stark enjoys having you around."

Tony's face turned red again. 


	5. Chapter 5

The next day, there weren't any morning classes for anyone, but students were still allowed to be on the campus. So that gave the group a reason to go to their courtyard to hang out and to study for their afternoon classes that were going to continue on later that day. Last night, Tony had stayed in his room trying to process his feelings; he was trying to explain to JARVIS what was going on and after processing them, JARVIS had explained that he didn't believe that it was an anxiety attack but something else that he couldn't explain either. Then what was it? Tony stayed up all night trying to figure it out by searching it up on the internet but didn't find any good results that would've explained anything. There was a form that he was reading from that actually explained how he was feeling perfectly, but the reason behind it on the form was because someone had a... crush on someone else. Tony never had a crush before and he didn't have a crush on anyone as far as he could tell. It was probably just something else that he had to figure out for himself, because it was  _not_ a crush, besides, he had this feeling ever since Steve bandaged up his burn and he would  _not_ have a crush on Steve. Would he?

"I'm not sure if I understand how to use this phone..." Steve told Tony as they were walking down the hall to their courtyard. He kept swiping his finger across the screen trying to learn the iPhone on his own. 

"C'mon, dude," Tony scoffed with a small shake of his head. "It's an iPhone, probably the easiest smartphone that anyone could own. You should be happy I bought you one, I could've bought you nothing." Tony paused for a moment. "Well, then again, I did destroy your old one by dunking it in water. Y'know what, forget what I said."

"You okay?" Steve questioned, looking up from his phone at to Tony. "You've been acting weird lately."

"Weird? I'm not weird, you're weird!" Tony snapped. "Look, nothing is wrong, okay? Just don't worry about it." He held the door of the courtyard opened for Steve which was extremely out of character for him. 

When Steve walked in through the door past Tony, his hand accidentally brushed against Tony's which caused his face to turn red once again like it kept happening last night. He followed in behind Steve and walked up to the group who was already all there doing their own thing. Bruce was leaning up against the large, old oak tree reading his book, Nat and Clint were sitting on the bench holding hands and giving each other googly, lovely eyes, and Thor was studying his history textbook and doing his homework. Bruce looked up from his book, pushing up his glasses up that were trying to slip off of his face, he was the first one to notice that Steve and Tony finally joined them.

"What took you two so long?" Bruce asked them, which caught the attention of everyone else. 

"What happened to your hand?" Nat asked Tony as she nodded towards the bandage wrapped around his hand still. 

"I got burned, that's all." Tony held his hand up against his chest. 

"Did you burn your face as well?" Thor pointed out when he saw that Tony's face was still red from just Steve brushing his hand. 

"What?" Tony touched his cheek with his good hand with his eyes wide. "No. I'm hot, that's all."

Clint laughed at Tony's response since he could clearly tell that he was lying. "What's their name, Tony?" He asked with a smirk on his face. 

"W-who?" 

"You're obviously blushing," Nat added in, raising her eyebrows. "What's their name?"

"Nobody! There's nobody, okay?" He plopped down on the ground next to the bench. She scoffed. "What!"

"You have a cru-ush," she mocked with a huge smile on her face. "You have to tell us who it is! C'mon!" She nudged his shoulder trying to get him to talk, but it wasn't working. 

"So, studying," Tony said to try and break the subject apart. He took his math textbook out of his backpack and set it down in front of him with the homework assignments out. "I should probably-" He paused when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. When he took it out he saw that it was a text from Nat; he looked up at her to ask what was going on but she just shook her head before he could say anything. 

Nat was getting everyone off of the subject of what they were talking about earlier so Tony could read the text without anyone bothering him. 

 _Messages(7) **Nat**_           _Details_

 

- _Okay, but seriously who is it?_

 

 _It's nobody, don't worry about it-_   

 

_-Well, I know that's a damn lie._

 

_We'll talk about it later, okay?-_

When Tony put his phone away after that small conversation with Nat, he looked over at Steve to see him have a smile on his face from whatever conversation that he, Bruce, and Thor were having. Seeing that smile gave Tony that same feeling of anxiety in the pit of his stomach again like it did last night. Maybe actually talking to Nat about this later would help him process what he was feeling.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing this out in my head, I realized it wouldn't have made since unless I made a bit of a time skip.  
> So currently in this chapter a little over two months has passed. I hope you enjoy! Also, I want to take this time to thank everyone for their comments, bookmarks, and kudos!

"Hey, Steve!" Nat's voice came from behind him in the hallway.

"Where's Clint? I don't think I've ever seen you two apart," Steve said jokingly with a smile on his face when he started to walk next to him.

"Funny. Y'know, he had classes too. But, hey, I wanted to talk to you about something. 

"That doesn't sound good." He was about to go into the history classroom that he and Nat both had together, but she put her foot up against it so it wouldn't open up any further. "What's wrong?"

She shifted her backpack over to her other shoulder as her right shoulder was starting to get sore from holding it up on its own. "We still have fifth-teen minutes for class to start and honestly, I rather not talk about Tony with other people around."

"Tony? What's wrong with Tony?" Steve asked in almost a panic, his eyes wide, but shut up when Nat hushed him. He didn't realize how loud he was actually speaking until he noticed that other people who were walking down the hallway gave him a puzzled look.

"C'mon, this way." Nat led them to the small student lounge that was across the hall from their classroom. It was currently empty, so it would be the perfect place for them to sit and talk about Tony.  They sat on one of the couches in the lounge, setting their backpacks down on the floor next to it. "So, what's wrong with Tony?" Nat asked as she wrapped her arms around her legs that where kicked up next to her on the couch. 

How was Steve suppose to know? Tony never told him anything issues that he was having. 

"What do you mean?" Steve leaned forward so that he was almost sitting on the edge of his seat. 

"Oh, come on, Steve. I know he's a little... eccentric, but he's been acting out more so than usual. You've noticed that too, right?"

Steve shrugged. "I guess so, but I've only known him for over a month or so, so I can't really weigh in..."

"But you agree?"

"Yeah."

"Awhile back he was suppose to tell me who his crush was but didn't ever tell me, and when I tried bringing it up again he avoids the conversation. I dunno, man, but maybe that's his issue." Nat looked back up at Steve from her pants when she was pulling out loose pieces of thread. Steve was staring off into space, his face was starting to turn a pink-ish color. "What's wrong? Why are people keeping things from me in this group? I'm suppose to be the one who helps-"

"I have a crush on Tony," Steve finally blurted out which totally caught Nat off guard. 

She paused for a moment trying to process what Steve just said. "Beg pardon?" Was all that she could finally say to that. 

It was totally unexpected that someone like Steve could have a crush on someone like Tony. Tony was a snobby rich kid with a huge ego; that is the complete opposite of Steve, so Nat had every right to be confused as hell. 

"I... have a crush... on Tony," Steve repeated as he sat back on the couch letting out a sigh. 

"Really?" Steve nodded. "Not that I'm judging you, but  _Tony Stark_? You do realize how much of an asshole he is, right?" Steve's face turned red again. "Like I said, I'm not judging. I just didn't know that was your type. "

"I didn't think so either."

Natasha nudged his shoulder. "Sooo, are you gonna tell him?"

"No, I don't think so."

She groaned loudly in frustration. "Why! I mean, you are his roommate, you're not going to be able to avoid these feelings forever."

"It's not like I'm never going to tell him, I'm just gonna wait for the right moment."

"Like... a date?" She asked with a smirk on her face. "Because I can plan everything out!" Nat busted out in laughter with Steve rolled his eyes and started walking away to get to class. 


	7. Chapter 7

That day Tony didn't have any classes so he just stayed at the dorm all day while Steve was out doing his own classes. Tony's burn had just finished healing after a month of receiving it, but that still didn't stop him from working on his project this entire time. Since Steve wasn't around during the day, Tony moved the projected out in the living room/kitchen since it was a much bigger space compared to his bedroom. Tony was standing on the couch with JARVIS keeping still on the coffee table that was in front of said couch. JARVIS was the one who was keeping everything in line, and if there was anything wrong with the programming he would tell Tony right away since the last time he didn't  saying anything Tony had a serious injury to his arm.

"How's everything looking so far?" Tony asked JARVIS as he was slipping on thin, black gloves onto his hands. 

"Everything appears to be in working order, sir." JARVIS turned to face him.

"Okay, should we start this up?" Just after he asked, Steve walked back into their dorm room. Tony turned to face his roommate. "Hey, I thought you'd be home later." 

"Uh, no. It's almost eight," Steve said as he set his book bag down on the floor next to the fridge. 

Tony pushed the black glove on his right hand down so he could see the watch on his wrist. "Eight? I didn't know it was getting that late." He shrugged. "Oh well."

"What are you doing?" 

Tony took a step to the right on the couch. "Come stand here, and I'll show you." Steve gave him a confused look, and before he could ask anymore questions Tony stopped him by talking first. "Remember that part about the hospital I told you about when you first moved in? This would be one of those times. Either you go to your room so you won't get hurt, or come stay and watch the magic." 

The magic? Steve thought to himself, still giving Tony a confused stare. What was he talking about. With a shrug, Steve stood next to Tony on the couch after taking off his shoes. While standing there next to Tony, Steve could just barely feel his arm brushing against Tony's, causing him to get goosebumps around the area. Along with those goosebumps, he also felt a slight electrical spark type feeling. What was that supposed to mean? 

"JARVIS, we ready?" Tony asked his best friend once more.

"Everything is prepared, sir," the tiny robot said, giving him a tiny thumbs up. 

"Is... what ready?" Steve finally asked. 

"Oh, yeah. So, you remember that burn I got about a month or so ago?" Steve nodded, how could he forget taking care of Tony like that? That's when he first felt that spark feeling, so he couldn't have forgotten that. "Yeah, this is what caused that burn." 

Steve's eyes went wide. "Then why were you still working on this?"

"Because, I didn't wanna waste my time on this just to throw it away. Now watch."

Tony clasped his hands together, when he did the center of his gloves glowed a light blue color. He held his right hand's palm up pointing towards the ceiling, that glove still glowed blue. The small circle in the center of the glove that emulated the light started to form a shape. Steve watched in awe, he was trying to guess what the shape was before it finished taking place. Tony decided to start off with something simple; in this case, he made a hologram of the Earth that was small enough to fit in his hand. 

"Cool, right?" Tony asked with a smirk on his face. "Now watch." With the hologram of the Earth still being emulated from his gloves, he clasped his hands together then pulled them apart, holding them out to his sides. The Earth hologram expanded, filling up the entire room. "Pick a place," he told his roommate. 

"Brooklyn, New York."

Tony swiped his left arm to the side, flicking his wrist . When the Earth hologram landed on the United States, he held his right arm out, pinched his fingers together and zoomed into the state of New York. He kept zooming in until he found Brooklyn. 

"That's my house," Steve told Tony, pointing at the small, run down home.

Tony looked confused so he decided to zoom in on it. There was an older man in an army uniform standing on the front lawn. Tony had pulled the images for his hologram from Google Earth at the moment so he didn't have to waste more time and effort on making his own images if the hologram didn't work, so he wasn't sure how old that they were. 

"Who's that?" He asked Steve. He glanced over at his roommate who was just staring at the man in the hologram, his eyes became glossy. That gave Tony the sense to move away from this image. "Okay, let's check out North Korea and see what they're up to."

"That was my dad," Steve said before Tony moved the hologram all around again. "He... He died not too long ago."

"From what?" Tony knew that it probably wasn't a good thing to ask at this moment, but he couldn't help it. His curiosity was getting the best of him. 

"He was on duty in Iraq, a bomb hit where he was stationed at and... yeah..." 

Tony clasped his hands together once more, closing the hologram. "Right, sorry... I didn't know that." 

"It's okay." He sat down on the couch, putting his hands over his face then let out a sigh. 

Tony was bad in these type of situations and didn't know what he could at this moment to help make him feel better. He cleared his throat, plopping down on the couch next to Steve, taking off his hologram gloves then tossed them onto the coffee table. He looked at Steve who still had his face covered, He held up his right hand for a bit before awkwardly patting Steve on the back to try and comfort him. It actually made Tony jump when Steve let out a chuckle and removed his hands from his face then looked up at his friend. 

"Are you comfortable with me now or something?" Steve asked him. 

Tony moved his hand away from him. "What are you talking about? You're my roommate, I'm kinda forced to be comfortable with you." 

"Don't you remember what you told me when I first moved in?" 

"Don't go into my room?"

"No."

"If you eat the rest of the chocolate you're the one who has to buy more?"

"No, that's not it."

Tony let out a dramatic sigh as he was trying to remember what he said, but he had no idea what it could've been. "Okay, smarty pants, want to fill me in on what you're talking about? I'm up against a wall."

"You don't touch people you don't feel comfortable with." Another smile appeared on Steve's face when he saw the realization on Tony's face. 

"Oh. That." Tony's face turned red but managed to keep it hidden from Steve as he stood up. "Yeah, you're my friend." He looked down at the palm of his hands to distract himself and to keep from looking at Steve. "Oh, hey, looks like the gloves need some minor adjustments. Looks like I'm getting some small blisters from the heat. I'll talk to you tomorrow." That was the best excuse that Tony could come up with to get out of this awkward for him situation. 


	8. Chapter 8

"Tony, we need to talk." 

He turned around to see Nat walking towards him out in the parking lot of the dorms. Tony had just gotten back from his quick stop at their local fast food place that was down the road. He took his sunglasses off as he was taking a long sip from the large plastic cup that he had bought there. Nat narrowed her eyes at him when it was clear that Tony's drink was gone, but he kept drinking through the straw until it was making that annoying slurping sound. She smacked it out of his hand and it rolled underneath someones car. 

"Violent today, are we?" 

"Not violent, just getting impatient," she said as she folded her arms over her chest. 

"What'd I do?" She just glared at him. "What'd Clint do?" She was still glaring at him. "Uh... Okay, what's making you so pissy?" Nat turned around and started walking towards her dorm building, leaving Tony standing there extremely confused. "Y'know, it would be great if you would just tell what's going on instead of just walking off on me," he said after catching up with his friend. 

During the, what seemed like forever, walk up to Natasha's dorm room, Tony was trying to get her to spill what she wanted to talk to him about. He went from constantly asking to trying to be extremely annoying to try and get her to talk but nothing was working. Honestly, Natasha had the patience of a saint, even around as someone as annoying as Tony. 

When they walked up the stairs to the third floor, Nat took out her key chain then unlocked her room. She lived in her room alone so everything was always really cleaned and organized, totally the opposite of Tony. 

She pointed to her couch. "Sit. We need to talk." Was all she said, and to be honest it was starting to freak him out.

"Um... okay?" He sat on the couch like he was told to. Normally he wouldn't do what someone told him to, but it was Nat and she could be kinda scary if she really wanted to be, and this time it was clear that she didn't have to have any joking around. "What's going on?" He asked her when she sat down in the chair across from him. "I mean, you really do look pissed off-"

"Tony, I'm not pissed. Like I said, I'm just starting to get impatient." 

"With me?"

"No, not with you. With Steve."

"Steve? Wait, our Steve?" She nodded. "Wow, I'm surprised, he's not the person that would upset anyone." 

"He didn't upset me. Look, I'm going to tell you something, okay? I may be taking a risk here telling you about this, but..." She let out a sigh as she looked down at her lap. "Last week, Steve told me... something."

"Something as in...?" 

"Something, as in that he has a major crush on you." She looked back up Tony to see how he was reacting to this. 

At first he had a blank look on his face, as if he wasn't sure what was just told to him, but then he chuckled. "Oh, I'm so sure he did," he answered sarcastically. 

"I'm telling you the truth, Tony. Would I honestly lie about something like that, even to you? Although, I'm not so sure why someone as humble as Steve would have a crush on an egotistical maniac such as yourself."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Like I said, he told me about this last week and has had that feeling towards you for a while now. He promised me that he was going to tell you by the end the of the week but it didn't happen." 

"Why are you getting so involved with this?" 

"Because, I want you both to be happy. Is that, like, unbelievable or something?"

Tony was looking out the window now, he wasn't sure on how he should be feeling about this. Happy, right? He felt the same way towards Steve, probably around the same time that Steve started to have feelings towards him. Well, since he knew for sure that Steve felt the same way towards him he should tell him, right? The thing is, Tony never actually had a real crush before, he always had flings that didn't have any emotions attached to them, but in this type of situation he had to tell Steve.

"How do I tell him that I feel the same?" Tony asked Nat as he was still looking out the window.

"You sit him down, say you want to talk about something important, and say what you need to say."

Tony looked back at Nat with a small smile on his face. "Thanks, Nat. I'll do that when he gets home."

\- - -

Steve had just gotten back home from his last class at around eight at night, he flung his book bag down next to the fridge like he did every night, but he noticed that AC/DC was blaring from Tony's room. Something didn't seem right. It was at the point in Tony's and Steve's friendship that they basically had the right to go into each others bedrooms if the door wasn't closed, since Tony's door was slightly opened, Steve took that as an okay to go into his room.

"Tony? You alright?" He said as he slowly opened the door. He honestly wasn't surprised to see his friend sitting in the middle of his bedroom with his back to the door since that's normally how he was. This time though, Tony wasn't working on anything, there were about four beer bottles laying around him on the floor. "Tony?" Steve said again, trying to get Tony's attention.

This time Tony heard him and turned around to face him, it was clear that he was drunk. "W-what are you doing...doing here?" He slurred before taking a chug of the beer bottle that he was currently holding.

"Class got out, you know that."

"Right..."

He pulled himself off of the floor using the bed as support, he was trying to stand up but was too disoriented and ended up plopping down on his bed instead. What happened was, Tony was trying to think of a way to tell Steve how he felt towards him. He got too nervous about it and started drinking instead to try and forget about it. Clearly that wasn't working out well so far. 

Steve knelt down on the floor and started picking up the beer bottles, he didn't want to risk Tony waking up in the morning with a hangover and accidentally stepping on one of them. "Why did you get yourself drunk? You only do that if you're upset." He set the empty bottles on his already crowded desk. Steve snatched the bottle that Tony was currently drinking from, he didn't need anymore alcohol in his system.

"Because... I'm afraid that you'll hate me..." 

"Why would I hate you? I don't have a reason to." He turned off the music before sitting down next to Tony on the bed. 

"Because, I got drunk because I was scared." 

"Of what? Me?" Tony nodded. "Why are you scared of me?" 

"Because..." Tony stopped, losing his train of thought. "I don't remember what I was gonna say." Neither of them said anything. Steve was waiting for Tony to say something. "Right, I remember. Look, I think I reaaalllly like you, well, not think. I do, and I know you like me too and that's why I got drunk so I could tell you." He started glancing around his bed. "I lost my beer." 

"Tony... You didn't have to get drunk to tell me that..." Tony leaned his aching head against Steve's right shoulder. "I was going to tell you eventually." 

"Eventually wasn't today. That's why I did it." He grabbed Steve's left hand and put it on top of his head trying to tell him to stroke his hair. 

"How about we talk about this in the morning, okay? When you're sober." 

"I'm sober."

"No, you're drunk."

"No, I'm fuckin' sober," he said as he lifted his head off from Steve's shoulder then tried leaning in the kiss him.

"Tony, look, you're drunk, okay?" Steve said as he tried pushing his roommate away from him.

"Yeah, but I know what I'm doing." Tony tried leaning in again to kiss him, the stench of alcohol was strong on his breath.

Steve quickly stood up from the bed where they were both sitting which caused Tony to face plant right into his pillow. "You're drunk," Steve repeated.

"I thought this was what you wanted," Tony slurred into the pillow before slowly lifting his head up. "I thought you wanted me but you're rejecting me?"

"I'm sorry, Tony," Steve whispered before he grabbed his blue jacket that was sitting on the desk then walking out of the dorm room. Leaving Tony sitting on the bed alone, confused and hurt.


	9. Chapter 9

Not long after Steve had left that night from having an encounter with the drunken Tony he had passed out from how much alcohol he had consumed that night. Steve had returned to their dorm room about an hour and a half after the whole thing to find Tony sleeping in his bed, to be nice, he put a glass of water on Tony's nightstand to hopefully help with his hangover in the morning. He had went to Thor's dorm room to stay for the while and couldn't help but spill the entire thing to him since he was the only one who was available to talk to. Thor gave him the best advice that he could, mostly just listening to Steve's story without any judgment. None of the people in their group was judgmental, unless someone was being stupid, that's when they would be judgmental. Other than that they were all chill with everyone else's personal lives. 

Tony groaned when he finally woke up that Saturday afternoon, his face was covered in drool and was basically stuck onto the pillow. He sat up, holding his hand over his head as he had a major headache from his hangover. Well, at least it was Saturday, Tony thought to himself as he swung his feet over his bed. In the corner of his eye he saw the cup of water that Steve had placed there earlier with the ice all melted but it would still be good enough. He chugged the water all down in one go which gave him a slight brain freeze, that certainly didn't help his hangover. 

Right when Tony pulled himself out of bed JARVIS was at his feet trying to get attention. There were times when Tony honestly couldn't tell if he had made a robot or a puppy. JARVIS kept scooting around in front of him until he eventually tripped over him and fell onto the floor, landing on a large cardboard box that had a bunch of spare parts of them. A bunch of sharp ends poked into Tony's chest, causing him to yelp in slight pain. 

He turned to face JARVIS who was spinning around in a circle as he was happy to finally get out of the room. "Why are you so impatient?" He asked as he sat up, kicking the box off to the side of the room so he wouldn't trip over that again. "You could've killed me."

"Not likely, sir. At most, you would have only suffered minor to a slight degree of injuries." 

"Thanks..."

"Do I sense sarcasm?" 

"Not trying to be." Tony winced, putting his hand on his forehead again. He needed some Motrin. "Be free, JARVIS," Tony said as he opened up the door. JARVIS ran out of the room happily with Tony slowly following behind him. "Argh!" Tony groaned when he saw the pool of sunlight pouring into the living room by the opened curtains. He saw Steve sitting on the couch while reading a textbook, but didn't think anything of it since he honestly couldn't remember a thing from last night besides what Nat told him. "You wanna close those?" He asked his roommate when popping a bottle of Motrin opened. 

"How's the hangover?" Steve asked him as he flipped the page of his history textbook.

"It's a hangover, what do you think?" He snapped but not meaning too. "Have you even had a hangover before? I can't see you being the type of person to drink- well, maybe, but probably just one or two beers so you're tipsy-" 

"Why did you get drunk?" 

"I don't remember, I guess I was pretty hammered." He looked up at the curtains that still weren't closed. "I'll get it!" He practically stormed passed Steve, stood up on the coffee table to close the curtains since he was too short to reach them. The only thing that mattered was that the sunlight was gone. "What are you staring at?" Tony snapped when he realized that Steve was staring at him. 

"Nothing." 

"Damn straight." Tony hopped down off of the coffee table and almost stumbled into the kitchen to get himself some coffee."So, what'd you do last night?" He called back into the living room as he was pouring coffee into his coffee mug. "Hope I didn't bother you too much being as hammered as I was." 

"Not at all." Steve went back to reading-or pretending to read- through his text book. "You said some stupid things then passed out."' 

"Stupid things? Like what?" 

"Can't really remember now." 

"Right..." Tony sat down next to Steve on the couch. He was planning on telling him right here right now on how he felt, he was kinda hoping that maybe his drunk self would have told Steve everything, but guess that didn't happen since Steve didn't bring up anything like that. "Hey, Steve... There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"What would that be?" Tony grabbed the textbook that was still in his hands and threw it across the room. He felt like Steve wasn't paying attention to him but rather more on the textbook and he wanted to have his full attention. "What was that for?"

"Steve, I..." He paused in mid-sentence. For some reason his mouth went dry and that nervous feeling was back in his chest.

"What's the matter?" Although Steve knew what Tony was trying to get across he didn't want to let him know that he knew what was going on. He could tell that Tony was nervous enough and didn't want to make it worse. "You know you can tell me anything, right?" 

"I... I think you're a nerd," Tony blurted out. Clearly that's not what he wanted to say but that was the first thing that came to mind. "No, that's not it."  Steve chuckled. "Not funny, dude!" 

"Just say what you need to say." 

"I lo-" 

Before Tony could even finish admitting how he felt, Steve smashed his lips into his. Both of their faces turned a bright red during the kiss. This was it. This was what they both wanted for a while and now they finally had it. 

Steve slowly pulled away, looking into Tony's eyes with a smile on his face. "I love you too, Tony." 

From the floor, JARVIS started throwing flower pieces over them. "Congratulations!" He said happily. It must have been extremely clear that they wanted each other if even JARVIS could see it. 

The point is they had each other now and nothing could break that.  
 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I write dialogue for JARVIS in this story, I hear it in Clap Traps voice from Borderlands and that makes it adorable.

"Guys, check this out," Nat had told Bruce, Clint, and Thor as they were all standing outside of Tony and Steve's dorm room. She had came over not too long ago to see how things were going with the whole relationship thing, but when she tried knocking on the door nobody had answered, so she had picked the lock and let herself in. Which happened quite often since JARVIS saw her sneaking in and just welcomed her instead of telling Tony or Steve. "I told you it was going to happen. Pay up." She held out her hand to Clint and Thor who slapped twenty dollars in her palm. 

The bet was whether or not Steve and Tony would get together by the end of the week or not. When Nat opened up their dorm door, they saw Steve and Tony napping with each other on the couch. Tony was resting his head against Steve's chest so he could hear his heart beating while Steve had his arms wrapped around Tony tight while they napped. They were both exhausted from the stress of telling each other how they felt, but now that they were dating they thought that it was time for a nap to reduce their stress. Add Tony's hangover to the equation, it was the best thing for both of them. 

The four of them slowly walked into the dorm so they wouldn't wake them up. Nat took out her phone then started to take a couple of pictures of the new sleeping couple, chuckling as she did. 

"Company!" JARVIS had shouted so loud that it actually woke both Steve and Tony from their deep sleep. "I love company! Can I get you guys anything?" He asked the group, rolling up to them but couldn't stay still. 

"I think we are good, thanks JARVIS," Bruce told the tiny robot. 

"If you guys need anything, don't be afraid to ask- Argh!" He shouted when Thor picked him up by the head. "That hurts! Let me down!" 

"Look at this tiny robot!" Thor said, still holding up JARVIS. "I must have one!" 

"You won't get one if you keep treating JARVIS like that," Tony said in a groggy voice as he was rubbing his eye. "What're you guys doing here?" 

"I wanted my money," Nat told him. 

"Money? What money?" Steve had asked them, sitting up with Tony still in his lap. 

"The money I made for one of you spilling you had feelings for one another,I made forty bucks today," Nat said as she put the money in her pocket. "The point is, I'm happy that you guys are together. We were all waiting for this to happen."

"Wait, you all knew?" Tony asked them with a raised eyebrow. 

"Dude, even Thor knew, pretty sure it was that obvious," Clint pointed out as he sat down on the beat up recliner chair, picking up the Xbox One controller on the coffee table.

"I was wondering when you two were going to get together," Bruce added in. 

Tony smirked. "Steve should be happy that he gets to be with someone as great as myself. I mean, I would be lucky to be dating myself." 

"You are full of yourself," Thor told Tony as he folded his arms over his chest. 

"That's just how I am." 

"C'mon, guys, I think Steve and Tony want some alone time," Nat told them with a smile on her face then laughed as she walked towards the door with everyone else following behind her. They all said their goodbyes before they left. 

"Your face is all red," Steve pointed out to Tony who just looked away from him. 

"Your face is all red..." Tony countered as he felt embarrassed. 

"Why are you blushing?"

"Why aren't you?"

"You're adorable." Steve pinched his cheek while Tony cast a glare at him. He wouldn't admit that he loved the attention that Steve was giving him. Steve cupped Tony's face in his hands then kissed him again, that had made his face turn into an even brighter red. After slowly pulling away from the kiss, Steve and Tony rested their foreheads against one another's, looking into each others eyes. 

There was something different in Tony's eyes that Steve haven't noticed before, it looked like happiness that he never had before. It certainly wasn't there when Steve first moved in, but the point was that it was there now and it was a good feeling. 

Tony's phone started ringing in his pocket. When he took it out, he looked at who was calling. It was his father. That was so strange, Tony and his parents ever rarely talked due to the fact that they weren't the best parents in the world. Especially his dad, he always casted him aside and said that he was too busy to hang out with him or even talk to him. It turned Tony bitter towards to his parents since his mother wasn't any better. 

He rolled his eyes before answering it. "What, Howard?" He almost snapped into the phone. 

"Is that anyway to talk to your father?" Howard answered, not sounding too happy himself. 

"Well, you know, it's weird you calling me since you never wanted anything to do with me." 

"I wouldn't call you if I didn't have a reason."

"Of-fucking-course."

"Listen, you still have that stupid little robot you built when you were a kid?" 

"Uh... You mean JARVIS?" 

"Yeah, yeah, HARVIS." 

"JARVIS." 

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You have it or not."

"I still have  _him_." 

"Good, I need you to bring it over tomorrow evening."

Tony looked down at JARVIS who hid himself behind the TV stand, the last time Howard wanted JARVIS he tried selling him to a collector who would have taken him apart to study him. "It depends. What do you want him for? Are you going to try and sell him again?"

"Not sell it, someone wants to see it. If they like what they see they'll pay for one of their own." 

"And how do you expect to build one?" 

"You. You will build one."

"Right."

"Obadiah Stane has heard about it and wanted to see it. Are you going to bring KARVIS over or not?" 

" _JARVIS_. Fine, I'll be there tomorrow." 

"Good, I'll send a driver out to pick you up tomorrow morning." After that, Howard had hung up without a goodbye or anything. Typical.


	11. Chapter 11

"How long do you think you'll be gone?" Steve asked Tony the following morning as he was adjusting his boyfriend's black blazer.

Underneath the blazer, Tony was wearing a black AC/DC t-shirt while wearing black jeans and black dress shoes. Tony's father had texted him earlier that morning to remind him that he had to look somewhat presentable, so this was the best that he could do. Well, not really. In Howard's mind, looking presentable meant wearing a full on business suit with a tie and all that fancy stuff. There was no way that Tony was wearing one of those to this, it wasn't worth his time or effort, so he half-assed it. Tony was only a bit nervous about the meeting once because he was going to see his dad again after a few years. He had no idea what he was going to expect. 

Tony couldn't help but smirk at Steve. "I dunno, probably a few months. Maybe a year or two." He chuckled when Steve narrowed his eyes at him. "Probably less than a week. Why? You gonna miss me or something?" 

"Well, I won't have to worry about your shenanigans for a whole week. What I am suppose to do with my life in the meantime?" 

"Actually get stuff done?"

"The truth behind that hurts."

Steve then pulled him into a tight hug. A part of him wanted to drop everything so he could go with him Tony, but he knew that he couldn't do that. It was going to be a boring week without Tony or JARVIS around that was for damn sure. 

From Tony's pocket his phone started to vibrate, letting him know that he had a text coming in. He didn't even need to open the text message to know that it was Happy letting him know that he was ready to go. 

"I gotta go," Tony finally said, even though he didn't want to leave the warm hug. He tangled his fingers through Steve's hair, bringing his lips down to his own. It felt like this moment was going to last forever. 

Until JARVIS ruined it. 

"It's time to go!" He had shouted while circling around Steve and Tony to get their attention. "I want to be free!" 

"I'll text you when I get there," Tony told Steve, resting his forehead against his. 

"Be careful, okay? I love you."

"I love you too."

Tony swung his backpack that was now filled with some clothes and other things that he could use to tinker with in case he got bored while staying with his parents for the week. He grabbed his keys from the counter next to the door before leaving his dorm room and his Steve behind. This was going to be tough. 

JARVIS was wheeling himself around the entire hallway, he couldn't stay still at all. It was rare that he left the dorm, and when he did he enjoyed himself. 

"JARVIS, look out," Tony grumbled after he almost tripped over his friend. He actually had to lean over JARVIS to open the building door since he was still in the way. As soon as that door opened JARVIS was outside in an instant. "C'mon, Happy's here," he called to him but he was busy talking to other students that were walking around the dorm buildings. 

"Hello! I'm JARVIS!" He introduced himself to a group of girls who were walking to their dorm building. 

Tony put his hands in his blazer's pockets as he walked over to them. "Y'know, I hate taking your time away from talking to your friends, but we really need to get going, buddy."

"I like your robot, Tony," one of the girls told him with a wink. The girls started giggling at them. 

"Yes, mister Stark. Goodbye, friends!" He waved goodbye to the group of girls before following Tony to Uncle Happy's car.

Happy was parked in front of the dorms, he was on his cellphone while waiting for Tony to show up. Tony stuffed his backpack in the backseat of Happy's car before getting into the passengers seat with JARVIS sitting on his lap. 

"I was starting to get worried that you weren't going to show up, Tony," Happy said as he put his phone in the cup holder in the center console of the front seat. 

Tony shrugged. "Would've been here sooner if my social butterfly of a robot didn't stop to make new friends," Tony answered playfully.

Happy slowly shook his head with a smile on his face as he started up the car. "I can't believe you still have JARVIS. I remember when you first started building him."

"Of course I still have him. I didn't exactly have many friends growing up."

"You and Pepper have been friends since first grade." 

"You got me there."

Happy pulled out of the parking lot and started driving down to the highway. "So how have things been going, Tony?" 

"Fine." 

"How have your friends been?" 

"Fine." 

"What's the matter?" 

JARVIS looked up at Happy. "Mister Stark is distressed from leaving Mister Rogers for the week." 

"JARVIS!" 

"It's true!"

A smile crossed Happy's face. "Who's that?"

"Steve Rogers, he's-"

"He's mister Stark's boyfriend!" JARVIS said happily. 

Tony rolled his eyes, sitting back in his seat. "It would be great if I could finish my own sentences, JARVIS. I'm just saying." 

"You have a boyfriend? For how long have you two been together?" 

"A few days, almost a week."

Happy patted Tony's shoulder with a bigger smile on his face. "I'm happy for you, Tony. Congrats! Are we keeping this on the down low from your parents?" 

"Sure are." 

Happy was always that cool uncle type person. He had always been Tony's friend, well, that kinda happens when someone almost raises you. Happy was both the Stark's bodyguard along with being Tony's nanny when he was younger up until he was third-teen. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I had a lot of downtime in classes after final exams, I wrote another chapter. Enjoy!

Steve started wandering around the dorm room, he honestly had no idea what he was suppose to do with himself now. He had an hour to kill until physics. To be honest, science wasn't Steve's strong suit and without Tony help he would be failing the class. Tony was the type of "tutor" that would just do the work for somebody else or tell them what to write so it wouldn't be in his own handwriting, Steve didn't want that though. He wanted to actually learn the material, not to cheat his way through the class which caught Tony off guard since all of the people that he helped out liked the east way through things. Especially college classes.

The best thing that Steve could think of doing right now was to clean up their dorm a little bit. It was honestly driving Steve crazy that Tony never put things away when he was done with them. Mostly speaking about Tony's CD collection. He had a huge CD rack in the living room that was overflowing with cases since they weren't place back properly; discs not put back into their cases, and they look like they've been thrown back onto the rack. It would be a miracle if the discs still worked after all the abuse that Tony had put them through. 

He knelt down in front of the CD rack and started to look through all the different cases and bands that were scattered about. He picked up a case with a blank, black cover with only the bands and album name in grey print. It was called  _Back in Black_ by a band called AC/DC. Steve's seen Tony wearing their band shirts before and heard him blaring their songs if he was either drunk or really into what he was working with, but he never actually listened to them himself. Shrugging, Steve opened up the case, he had decided that since he and Tony were now dating he should try to get into some of his interests. He wasn't surprised to discover that the disc wasn't in there, so it was either in the living rooms stereo or in Tony's CD player. Steve crawled over to the stereo system that was sitting next to the TV stand, he popped opened the CD reader hoping that it was there, but, of course, it wasn't. Which meant that it was in Tony's messy room. 

"If I could get through his room alive it'll be a miracle..." Steve mumbled to himself under his breath as he stood in the doorway of Tony's room. There were small pieces of hardware laying all over the floor, and since Steve had no clue what they could've been used for he didn't want to move them around. 

\-  -  -

The hour long drive was extremely boring for Tony as he was already missing Steve which, for him, felt extremely weird. He never exactly missed somebody before and didn't know if that was a normal thing for him to feel. To try to keep himself busy he had first, tried tinkering around with JARVIS but he would not allow it whatsoever as he was worried that he may shut down and miss the entire car trip. Well, at least one of them was enjoying the drive. Then when Happy noticed how restless Tony was getting he tried to help cheer him up by playing car games with him to pass the time. Tony knew that Uncle Happy meant well, but it wasn't entertaining to him, even as a kid it didn't entertain him so nothing has changed. 

"I spy with my little eye..." Happy's sentence drifted off as he was trying to find something that would work. "Something... blue." 

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" JARVIS kept shouting as he was waving his tiny robotic arm in the air to try and get Happy's attention. "I wanna guess! Uncle Happy!" 

"Tony, wanna guess?" Happy asked him as he ignored the tiny enthusiastic JARVIS. 

Tony shifted in his seat with his arms folded over his chest while letting out an impatient sigh. "I dunno..." He thought about what if could have been for a bit, looking down at JARVIS. He smirked as he picked him up from his lap, causing JARVIS to let out a scream of surprise. "Is it JARVIS' eyes?"

"That's right!"

Tony put him back down on his lap. "Y'know, JARVIS, I've been thinking of changing-"

"No!" He interrupted Tony. "I am as perfect as the day I was made." He looked out the windshield then gasped loudly. "We're here!"

"Oh great..."  

\- - -

Steve walked into Mr. Richardson's physics class on time as usual even after organizing Tony's CD rack, which was a surprise since it was such a disaster. Mr. Richardson was surprised to see only Steve walk into his class without Tony. Since he knew that they were dating he found it strange that Tony wasn't with him as they never seemed to leave each others side. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Mr. Richardson said to Steve as he was about to pass him. He kicked his feet up on the old desk that was as beat up as his office chair. "You're missing your other half there, Mr. Rogers." 

Steve chuckled. "No, he's out of town for the week."

"The week?" Steve nodded. "The _entire_ week?" Steve nodded again. "Oh, thank God. I don't have to hear his smartass remarks for a while." Mr. Richardson reached underneath his desk and pulled out a small stack of papers. "Here, these are the assignments for the week. Just give it to him when he gets back, but it's Tony, so he'll have it finished in an hour."

"Most likely." Steve grabbed the assignments. "I'll make sure he gets them."

"Or not, maybe his grade will finally drop to an A- and his ego will be shot." 

"I don't think anything can bring his ego down." He turned around and walked up the row to sit in his normal spot next to Bruce who was, as always, reading his book. "I swear, you have a new book everyday," Steve said to him but Bruce didn't realize that someone was there. "Bruce?"

"Hm? Oh." He closed his book and looked up. "Wait, where's Tony? Is he hungover?" 

"Out of town." 

"Well, it looks like you can finally get stuff done."

"That's what everyone has been saying." 


	13. Chapter 13

Before Tony went inside his house, he put JARVIS in his backpack which turned out to not be a good idea. The entire time he was trying to fit JARVIS inside the backpack, the small robot was trying to wiggle his way out so he could see the world around him. In all honesty, Tony didn't want JARVIS out of his sight, which was the exact reason why he had stuffed him into his backpack; he didn't want to but he didn't want to risk his father trying to sell JARVIS off without him knowing. So this was for the best. 

"Let me out!" JARVIS called from the backpack that was slung over Tony's right shoulder. "I command you!"

"JARVIS, relax, okay?" Tony told him as he and Happy were walking towards the front door. "Do you want to get sold? I don't think so." 

"Tony, you need to relax," Happy said unexpectedly. "You're nervous."

"I'm not nervous."

"Definitely nervous!" JARVIS added in. Tony 'accidentally' dropped his backpack on the front stairs as he started walking up them. "Ow!" 

Chuckling, Tony picked it up and put it back over his shoulder. "Sorry."

"You don't sound sincere!" 

Happy searched for the house key from his mass of different ones from his key ring until he found the right one. In Tony's eyes, watching Uncle Happy put the key into the lock was moving in slow motion as he was starting to get some anxiety built up in his chest. He just wanted to slap the keys out of Happy's hands to tell him to take him back home to Steve where Tony was complete sure that he would take all of his anxiety and fears away. Even though he won't admit he had them in the first place, of course. But Steve knew Tony better than that though, he could tell whenever his boyfriend was having anxiety or felt upset or worried about something, he won't ever call him out on it but he would take care of him. 

Tony snapped out of his thoughts when he heard the front door creak open, now he had to deal with drama, as usual. They walked inside and into the living room where Howard and Maria Stark were waiting for him to show up, along with this Obadiah Stane guy. Tony had no idea what to expect, but all he had to do was keep his ego up and not show how anxious he was feeling and he would be just fine. Maybe this won't be so bad, Tony thought to himself after taking his first step into the living room. He saw his parents and an older man who had to be in his late forty's, bald headed, had a grey-ish bread and was wearing a suit.

"Okay," Tony said to get their attention, "I'm here."

The three of them turned to face him, his mother standing up from the couch then walked over to him. "Welcome home, sweetie," she greeted before giving him a kiss on the cheek. "How's school going?" 

"It's fine," Tony said quickly. 

"For God's sake, Anthony. I asked for only one thing from you and that was to dress presentably," Howard said in an extremely stern voice. 

Tony looked down at what he was wearing then back up to his father. "I think I look fine. Lets just get this over with so I can sleep for the rest of the week." 

Howard let out a sigh before turning to face his guest who was now standing next to him. "Anthony, this is Obadiah Stane."

Stane and Tony shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Anthony," he said politely with a small smile on his face. 

"Call me Tony." 

"Tony, I've heard you've built a robot."

"Yeah, I built him when I was five. Kinda late finding out about this, huh?"

"Anthony!" Howard hissed. "Be polite!" 

Before Tony could reply with a comeback to that, Stane just shook his head. "Ah, he's fine, Howard. Don't worry about it." He turned back to face Tony. "May I see him?" 

Tony couldn't help but crack a small smile at that. At least someone remembered that JARVIS wasn't an it. He took off his backpack, and knelt down on the floor to let JARVIS out. Actually, he didn't even get to unzip his backpack halfway when JARVIS was trying to squeeze his way out. 

"Air! I need air!" JARVIS called out as he popped his head out of the bag. 

"You don't need air, JARVIS..." Tony said while having a puzzled look on his face. "You are literally a robot." JARVIS fell out of Tony's backpack, landing face first on the wooden floor. 

JARVIS glanced around the room, when noticing that there was a person there that he had never seen before he got excited. "Company!" He shouted happily as he pushed himself up from the floor. He wheeled himself over to Stane who had knelt down in front of the hyper little robot. "Nice to meet you! I'm JARVIS!" He held out his tiny hand to Stane who chuckled as he gently shook it.

"Hello, JARVIS, I'm Obadiah Stane. It's nice to meet you too."

When JARVIS turned around to see Maria Stark he got excited again. "Mrs. Stark!" He said then wheeled over to her. "Did you need anything?"

Maria giggled at JARVIS, he was always trying to help around the house. "No thank you, JARVIS. I think I'm good."

Turning around again, JARVIS saw Howard Stark and all that excitement seemed to disappear. Every time he saw Howard he couldn't help but become worried that he would try selling him again, it was a nightmare to think that he could've been scrap metal if Tony didn't catch what what happening. JARVIS tried climbing back into Tony's backpack, but he couldn't quite make it. Instead, Tony picked him up and held onto him to make him feel safe from harm.

"Do you two mind if Tony and I talk alone?" Stane asked Tony's parents. 

"Not at all," Howard said with a smile on his face. As he was about to walk past his son, he grabbed his arm and brought him close to him so he could talk to him without anyone else noticing. "You be on your best behavior," he hissed into Tony's ear before letting him go then leaving the room with Maria by his side. 

"I need you to build me something, Tony."

"No surprise there." 

"I like JARIVS, I think it's amazing that you build him when you were just five years old. Have you built anything else like him since then?" 

"No, I've been busy doing other stuff that I didn't even think about it."

"You think you could build me something similar to JARVIS?"

"Similar?" 

"How do I explain? Something that a person can fit into and control." 

"Like... an armored suit?" 

"Exactly!" 

"Yeah, I can make something like that, but it'll take some time..." 

"Take as much time as you need, Tony." Stane took a business card out from his pocket and held it out to him. "Just keep me posted on how things are going with it." 

"Er... okay..." Tony said as he took the card. 

"We'll be getting in touch soon, Mister Stark." Stane patted Tony on the shoulder before leaving the living room.


	14. Group Chat #1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I write the Group Chat chapters, I will let you know who's phone we are looking at at the time. In this chapter, it is Tony's phone. P.S. since they're texting, most grammar/punctuation won't be used.   
> I am also taking this time to say thank you all to the people who've read this story, gave kudos, bookmarked, and subscribed. It means so much to me.

_Messages(14) **Group Chat: Avengers**_         _Details_

**Rogers:**   _Wait, why is the chat called that?_

**Nat:** _Ask tony he made it that way_

_Bc its cool so shut up **:**_ **Tony**

_What dont you think its cool?_ **:Tony**

**Thor:**   _YOU CONFUSE ME SOMETIMES, MECHANIC_

**Clint(Bird-Brain):** _Caps lock is on again, buddy. :P_

 

**Thor:** _I HAVE GREAT NEWS, FRIENDS!_

**Clint(Bird-Brain):** _Does it involve you turning off caps >:(_

**Thor:**   _MY BROTHER WILL BE JOINING ME HERE SOON._

**Nat:** _The one who pushed you out a 3rd story building?_

**Rogers:**   _That sounds terrible..._

 **Thor:**   _NONSENSE, IT WAS A JOKE THAT'S HOW LOKI JOKES_

 **Nat:**  Y _oure just lucky you had a bush to break your fall..._

 **JARVIS:**   _Hello, friends! I have missed you all!_

_How did you get in the chat? you don't have a phone_ **:Tony**

**JARVIS:** _A SUIT OF ARMOR IS BEING BUILD AFTER ME_

_Is nothing in my life private, JARVIS?_ **:Tony**

_Bruce ik you're low-key reading thru this_ **:Tony**

**Bruce:** _I don't think that's a good idea, Tony..._

**Nat:**   _^ agreed_

 **Rogers:**   _At least know what you're getting into._

_Ik what im doing okay? it'll be fine. **:Tony**_

_**Clint(Bird-Brain):** Rmber last time you said that?_

**_Clint(Bird-Brain):_ ** _And you almost burnt down the science room?_

_First off that wasnt my fault._ **:Tony**

**Bruce:** _Just make sure you're 100% on this, Tony._

 

 

_ Messages(12)          **Rogers**        Details _

_**-** What are you getting yourself into?_

_Dont worry about it itll be fine **-**_

_**-** Tony..._

_It will be **-**_

**JARVIS:**   _I will make sure everything is fine._

_JARVIS you hacking into my messages isnt cool **-**_

_**-** I'm going to go to bed. Missing you a lot._

_I knew u would start missing me -_

_Bc i kinda miss u too -_

_\- I love you, Tony._

_I love you too, Steve -_

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the 100 kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, everyone! It means a lot to me and I hope you're all enjoying the story so far!   
> Another thing; this chapter will take place at the end of the week.  
> Also, sorry about taking so long to update! I've been having some writers block, but since I have the best of this story planned out you can expect more updates quickly.

Messages(9) __ **_Stane_ ** _ Details _

- _ How is the armor coming along? _

_ The blueprints are finished just gotta build it- _

_ -Good job, Tony. Can't wait to see the end piece _

_ I'll let you know what its done- _

 

There was a knock on Tony's door frame, causing him to look up from his phone to see Happy standing there with a small smile on his face. He picked up Tony's backpack that was sitting next to the dresser and slung it over his shoulder. 

"Ready to go, Tony?" Happy asked him after looking at the time on his iPhone. 

JARVIS squeezed his way through the door frame and Happy to get into the room. "I am ready to go!" He announced as he started to spin himself into a circle. "I can't wait for the road trip!" 

"It's the same thing as when we drove up here, JARVIS," Tony pointed out to his friend as he stood up from his bed, putting his phone in his coat pocket. 

"About that," Happy started to say, "highway is closed so we gotta take the country roads." 

"Oh, that'll be fun..." He let out a sigh as he walked past Happy and JARVIS. The country roads would take about an hour longer than it would with the highway and in all honesty Tony just wanted to get back home to Steve. He really did miss him a bunch. “Let’s get going then.” 

As he got down to the third step he heard JARVIS shrieking from behind him which caused him to jump in surprise and turn around to see what was wrong. JARVIS was standing at the stop of the steps. “I can’t go downstairs! Carry me!” He yelled at Tony who just rolled his eyes and then picked him up. A demanding little puppy is what he was… 

At the bottom of the steps Tony’s mother was waiting with a sad smile on her face as she wasn’t ready for her son to go back to the school dorms. She wished that he would stay at home while he was in school, but she could totally understand why Tony didn’t want to do that. With the way he and Howard fought most of the time she wouldn’t have want to stay in the house either. It seemed like Tony was happy at the dorms and at school with his friends and that’s all she wanted for him. 

“It’s a shame you’re leaving so soon, sweetie,” she told Tony as he now stood in front of her, wearing a smile on his face. “I would love it if you came over more often but… I can understand why.” She glanced at Howard who was sitting in the living room watching TV. “I love you.” 

“I love you too mom.” He wrapped his arms around her after setting JARVIS down on the floor and pulled her into a long hug. JARVIS wrapped his little arms around her legs as a hug of his own. 

“Text me when you get home, sweetie.”

“I will.” After letting go of the hug, Tony looked at his father who hasn’t moved from his spot in the living room while watching some documentary on the TV. “I’ll see ya, Howard.” His father grunted in response, causing Tony to roll his eyes before walking out of the house. 

“I had a bunch of fun!” JARVIS said happily as Tony picked him up and walked them to Happy’s car that was waiting from them.

“Well, at least one of us had fun…”

“C’mon, Tony. You didn’t have a little bit of fun? It must have been nice to see your parents,” Happy said as he placed his backpack in the backseat. Tony just shrugged as he slid into the passenger seat with JARVIS in his lap. “Well, you’ll get to see Steve soon, bet you’re looking forward to that.”

“You have no idea.” 

* * *

The drive through the country back roads was peaceful in a sense. It was a nice change than watching the town fly by them, the crops were something that JARVIS was fascinated with. It was actually getting so annoying that Tony stuffed him into his backpack to get him up to shut up. Tony just needed some peace and quiet from his long weekend. He couldn’t wait to get home he was thinking about it nonstop, how it would be to go back in Steve’s arms and snuggle on the couch while watching TV. It was a great thing to look forward to.

“Do you hear that, Tony?” Happy asked after he turned off the radio. They were both silent for a moment so they could hear whatever it was. “It’s like a…”

“It’s like a ticking sound…” Tony finished for him. He picked up his phone to make sure it wasn’t that making the noise. “I have no idea what it is…” 

Not long after Tony said that something had caused Happy’s car to explode from the engine. The car had ran itself off the road and crashed into the tree while it was burning. The airbags launched out from the dashboards, but… something was wrong with Tony’s… Little did they know that Happy’s car had been recently recalled by the company, something about defective airbags sending out shrapnel. Well, that shrapnel launched itself through Tony’s chest, causing him to cough up blood while he started to bleed out. 

Happy acted quickly grabbing Tony’s backpack from the backseat then threw it to the other side of the road then grabbed Tony from his seat and dragged them both out. They had no idea if the car was gonna catch on fire or not, but Happy wanted to get as far away from it as possible in case something did happen. Tony couldn’t keep his eyes opened anymore, all he could see was green and black dots and it was starting to give him a headache. He started to go limp in Happy’s arms and it worried him greatly. 

“Tony… Tony you have to stay with me!” He called to him. Once they were far enough away from the car Happy pulled out his phone and called the ambulance to get someone there for Tony. “You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”   


	16. Chapter 16

The ambulance had gotten to the scene quickly, it appeared that the shrapnel was deep in Tony’s chest and possible even in parts of his heart so they escorted them to the hospital as quickly while treating Tony the best that they could. The paramedics were freaking out when they saw the backpack slung over Happy’s shoulder moving around on its own, but it was just JARVIS. The little robot was extremely worried about the condition of his human brother and was demanding that the paramedics “bring him back to life.” There were some things that JARVIS didn’t know, like how doctors couldn’t always save a person that was under their care. He thought they just gave someone a drink and boom, they were okay. If only it really did work like that. 

They put Tony into emergency surgery as soon as they got to the hospital and at the moment they didn’t have any information to give Happy so it was a little nerve wracking for him. He kept telling himself that it wasn’t their fault for the little information at the moment and calmed himself down. Luckily he had JARVIS there with him to keep him company, it wasn’t the best company at the moment since he kept asking uncle Happy all sorts of questions that he didn’t have answers to but wish that he did. JARVIS started ‘crying’ and was feeling very upset over Tony so Happy was holding him in his arms, of course he got weird glances in the waiting room from comforting a robot but he didn’t think much of it. He thought of JARVIS as a nephew just as much as he did for Tony. 

After JARVIS was calmed down enough he was set down in the chair next to Happy while he started going through Tony’s backpack. That’s where he had put his cellphone before the entire thing happened and Happy thought it would be best to tell Steve what was going on. Since he was Tony’s boyfriend after all he deserved at least a phone call explaining the entire thing. Unfortunately for Happy, when he turned the phone on he was met with a lockscreen meant to be unlocked with a pin number and he had no idea what to even try. JARVIS. 

“Hey, buddy,” Happy said to the small robot who was sitting in the chair patiently watching the TV screen on the wall that displayed the status of patients in surgery. “Do you know what Tony’s-”

JARVIS voice turned into a deep robotic voice that he hadn’t heard before. “Mister Stark’s PIN number: 0514.” After that his voice turned back to normal. “I assumed that is what information you wanted?”

“It was, thanks. I’m gonna call Steve.” 

“Wonderful idea uncle Happy!” 

Happy searched through Tony’s contacts finding Steve’s number then called him. The phone rang about three times before someone picked up. 

“I just got out of the shower,” Steve answered thinking that it was Tony calling him. “I thought you were suppose to be back by now?” 

“Steve. My name is Happy, Tony’s uncle.” 

“Is something wrong?” Steve’s heart started pounding against his chest since he knew Tony wouldn’t let most people go through his phone. “Where’s Tony.”

“That’s…” Happy let out a shaky sigh. “That’s why I’m calling. I’ll just give you the rundown on what happened. I was driving him back to the school but we had to use back roads since the highway was closed and… something happened to the car and a defective airbag sent something through Tony’s chest. I-I don’t remember what it was. Sorry, I’m a little shaken up.” He let out a nervous chuckle. 

“Oh my god! How is he doing now?!” 

“Dunno. He’s in surgery right now and I don’t really have anymore information than that. If you and the others want to come up and wait for him to get out of surgery I’m sure it would mean a lot to him.”

“Of course.” 

* * *

 

It had been about two hours since the rest of the group showed up at the hospital to wait for Tony to get out of surgery. They were all anxious, especially Steve. Even though he and Tony didn’t know each other for long and had recently started dating he had felt a deep connection towards him and just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before he left. God, he wished Tony never decided to go visit his parents because none of this would have happened. What he would give to just turn back the clock… Only about fourteen hours they were talking on Skype smiling and laughing at Tony’s stupid jokes. How could things turn around so quickly? 

A nurse had walked into the room and over to them. Everyone’s hearts started pounding heavily as they were worried about what the news was about their friend. His name wasn’t on the status board anymore and that made them even more worried. 

“What’s the damage?” Happy asked when nobody else said anything. 

“Well, good news he is stabilized and resting up in a room,” the nurse said as she took a seat from across from them all. “Although we did manage to get the majority of the shrapnel out from his chest there are a few pieces floating around by his heart. It could let loose at anytime and damage his heart.” 

“You can’t get it out?” Clint asked her.

“No, it’s too close to the heart and we don’t want to risk anything.”

“So what happens now?” Steve asked.

“Well, he won’t be able to move around much until we figure out a way to remove them safely. Any long term walking around could be fatal so we suggest leaving him here for the time being.” 

“Can we go see him?” Nat asked.

“Of course.” 

She started leading them through the maze of hallways in the hospital. The entire trip felt like hours or days just to get to Tony’s hospital room to Steve. He was so anxious about him and just wanted to hold him tight and tell him that everything would be alright and he would never leave his side. His emotions were all over the place right now and was trying to gain control over them before they got there. Everything would be okay. 

“Just try not to rile him up,” the nurse told them after opening the door then leaving so they could have their time with him without being disturbed. 

Happy thanked her before walking in with the group behind him. There was Tony, laying in the white hospital bed sitting upwards so he could see the TV better. He was flipping through channels trying to find something to watch but he was getting annoyed at the lack of channels they had that had anything good to watch. He had bandages wrapped all around his chest and a heart monitor hooked up to him and all you could hear was that annoying  _ beep  _ sound every second. He was going to go insane staying here. 

“Stupid hospital TV…” Tony mumbled as they walked in further into the room. He just noticed them in the corner of his eye. “Shit, what are you guys doing here?” When he saw Steve he started blushing slightly. He had waited for what felt like forever to see him and  _ this  _ is the state he had to see him in. 

“We’re your friends, idiot,” Nat said as she sat in the only chair in the room. “That’s why we’re here, to make sure that you are okay.”

“How are you-” Thor was cut off by JARVIS running into the room screaming.

“TONY. OH TONY. YOU HAVE LIVED! THE DOCTORS HAVE CURED THIS HUMAN WITH NO ISSUE. TOOONNY!” He tried lifting himself on the bed but couldn’t quite make it so Bruce picked him up and put him up there. “MY TONY!” JARVIS wrapped tight arms around him without realizing that he was hurting him.

“Y-you’re h-hurting me,” Tony tried squirming out of the robot’s tight grip but it wasn’t that easy. “JARVIS, I’m okay! Please let go.”

“NO. I ALMOST LOST YOU!” 

Tony looked up at Happy to give him the look of ‘please save me.’ Happy nodded and pried JARVIS away from him. “He’s fine, buddy. You can’t do that,” Happy tried explaining but the little robot didn’t want to listen to him. 

“Guys? Can I have a minute with Tony?” Steve asked everyone and they had no issue of giving them some space. Well, expect for JARVIS who was still freaking out over all of this but Happy managed to get him out of the room. 

“I feel like you’re going to yell at me. Are you gonna yell at me because-” Tony was silenced when Steve smashed his lips to his, being careful to not go near the bandages that were on his chest. The heart monitor sitting next to them started beeping faster and louder only because Tony’s heart was picking up from the kiss with Steve. God he had missed him so much. He tangled his fingers through Steve’s blond hair while smiling against his lips. 

Steve pulled away with a smile on his own face. “Do you think if I keep kissing you the nurses will rush in here because of the heart monitor?” 

“I dunno. But now I kinda wanna find out.”


	17. Group Chat #2

Messages(74)           **Group Chat: Avengers**       Details

                 Hey you guys awake? I need help with something  **:Tony**

**Rogers:** Shouldn’t you be resting?

**Nat:** What?

 

**Thor:** I WILL BRING WHATEVER YOU NEED TO RECOVER

**Bruce:** What’s up?

So theyre saying it could take up to a year to    
                           figure out what to do with the rest of this stuff     **:Tony**   
                           but lucky me. Ik how to fix this but i need you   
                           to bring up a few things for me.

**Clint(Bird Brain):** A year? really? why cant they   
                                                 pull it out like the others?

**Rogers:** I think you should wait on them, Tony…    
                                   They know what they’re doing.

 

I don’t want to wait in bed for a year for something **:Tony**   
                            that I can just do myself. Trust me, it’ll be okay.

 

**Clint(Bird Brain):** You should prob run it by Bruce   
                                                    first tho since youre like, science buddies.   
  


                             See if i do that then you guys may not get me what   
                             I need. This is what you guys gotta get and sneak it **:Tony**   
                             into the hospital for me. Also dont tell happy 

 


	18. Chapter 18

The group was able to sneak Tony the box of stuff that he had requested them into the hospital room. As confused as they were about the continents inside they didn’t ask any questions. Tony had said the less they knew the better in case they were caught with it. Whatever that meant, that just made them not want to ask questions about the entire thing, but it was Tony, he wouldn’t say even if they asked him 1000 times. It took him about two days to build whatever it was before checking himself out of the hospital at three in the morning without any of his friends knowing. 

 

After the twenty minute walk back to the dorms he had finally made it. He slowly and quietly entered the apartment hopefully without waking either Steve or JARVIS. God forbid he wake up JARVIS. It would be a huge mess that he didn’t want to deal with right now and all he wanted to do was find Steve and cuddle the fuck outta him. He slowly opened the door to his dark bedroom, he frowned when he didn’t see Steve in there, but it turned into a smile when he saw JARVIS sleeping on his bed instead. He didn’t close the door all the way but enough to where he could go on over to Steve’s room without getting caught by the robot. Luckily his door was opened and Tony could see the dark figure of Steve sleeping in his own bed. 

Instead of being normal in this situation and turning on the lights to let Steve know that he was home he decided to take the asshole route. Tony crawled underneath his blanket and slowly started inching his way up towards Steve. He was gonna scare him good for messing with him at the hospital he purposely made his heart monitor beep more and more while kissing him. It was payback and it was gonna be so sweet. 

When he was laying right next to Steve with him totally unaware Tony smiled real big then yelled ‘boo!’ Steve screamed and ended up falling out of bed while Tony was laughing so hard at this. He wished he would have gotten that on video to rewatch when he was feeling down. 

“That. Was. Great!” Tony said through his laugh as he looked down at Steve who had a surprise look on his face.

“T-Tony? What are you doing here?!” He demanded while his heart was trying to beat out of his chest. “You should be in the hospital!”

“Yeah, ‘should be’. Check this out.” He took off his shirt which caused Steve to blush and bite down on his bottom lip. However, when he saw something implanted into Tony’s chest he looked extremely concerned. “Isn’t it cool?”

“What is that?!” 

“An arc reactor. It’s made with the stuff you guys brought up for me.”

“Wh-”

“All the leftover shrapnel isn’t going anywhere since this is here. Yup, so I’m free to live without a hospital in my life. I’m back to normal.”

“You’re not back to normal.. You have this…  _ thing  _ stuck in you!” 

“This  _ arc reactor  _ is what’s keeping me alive now. I thought you would be happy about that.” 

For a moment Steve actually thought that he saw a hurt look across Tony’s face and felt bad that it sounded like he didn’t care. “No, no I’m happy Tony. I really am. You just scared the shit outta me.” He stood back up before crawling back into bed next to Tony who was eager to cuddle up to him. He held out his arms to Tony who went right into them, he got extremely comfortable curled up at his side. 

Steve reached down to cup Tony’s face in his hands before starting to gently kiss him. He was a little nervous to get too handsy with Tony tonight due to the fact he had that… What’d he call it again? Arc reactor? On his chest now and didn’t want to accidentally break it. 

“Okay,” Tony said angrily then pulled away from Steve. 

“What?” 

“What’s wrong with you? You don’t seem happy I’m home.”

“I am! I’m just… worried about that arc reactor, okay? What if it stops working?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “It’s not gonna stop working, just trust me.” He put a hand over one of Steve’s cheeks. “It’s gonna be fine. I’m fine.” 

“Promise?”

“Promise. I love you.” Tony’s face turned entirely red after saying that because he has barely said it in his life and meant it. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of stuff is starting to unfold. Uh oh.

Now that Tony was finally home and feeling better than he did in the past few days he was able to pull himself to work on all the homework that he missed for the week. He was sitting on the couch with his feet kicked up on the coffee table, his laptop out while the Beastie Boys were blaring out from the laptop’s weak speakers. While he was doing that, Steve was in the kitchen cooking them both some lunch. Even though Tony insisted that he was fine he still wanted to make sure he got rest and not do too much incase that Arc Reactor thing would break. It wasn’t like Steve wasn’t happy that Tony was finally home, but he wished that there would be a better way for him to get treatment instead of that thing in his chest. Maybe he was overthinking this…

There was a knocking at the door that pulled Steve out of his thoughts. He wasn’t expecting any of their friends to come over, unless maybe they were coming to check up on Tony. Tony watched as his boyfriend walked away from the stove to answer the door. 

“Uh… Hello?” Steve said as he didn’t recognize the man at the door. He was an older man with a bald head, a whitening beard and he was wearing a suit. He was mostly likely here to see-

“What’s crackalackin, Stane,” Tony said hopping off of the couch to greet his new buddy. He glanced at Steve then cleared his throat. “Steve, this is Stane. The one I’m making the armor for.” 

“Nice to meet you, Steve,” Stane said with a smile on his face.

“Nice to meet you too. Come in.” Steve didn’t say anything when he closed the door behind the older man. There was something about him that just gave him a bad vibe but couldn’t exactly place his finger on it. 

While Tony was moving back to his laptop to save his homework and to turn off his music, Stane obviously couldn’t help but notice the Arc Reactor that was on Tony’s chest. Since he was basically flaunting it wearing an unbuttoned shirt. 

“What the hell is that?” He asked, pointing at it. 

“This is what’s keeping me alive,” Tony said with a smirk. It was slightly annoying to Steve how he was showing it off to everyone, it’s not supposed to be a fashion statement and shouldn’t be treating it like one. “They couldn’t get all the shrapnel out.” 

“Ah, yes. The accident… I believe it was Happy who informed me about it… I hope you’re doing well. Seems like you’re being well looked after.” Stane turned to smile at Steve who returned it weakly. Yeah, this guy was giving him real bad vibes. “Along with coming in to check on you, I was also curious to see what you have so far done with the armor we’ve discussed.” 

“Right… About that…” He motioned his friend to follow him into his bedroom. “I couldn’t get too much done, but I did just finish the exoskeleton.” Tony flipped on the light switch of his room. He had to step over so much junk on the floor to a point he eventually just hopped onto his bed so he didn’t have to deal with it all. “Uh, watch your step.”

JARVIS was rolling around the room with an arm full of tools. He had explained earlier that he was collecting them to make his very own robot. Even though Tony had tried to explain time and time again that it wouldn’t work like that JARVIS just wouldn’t listen to him. Saying something like, ‘anything is possible if you believe.’ Turned out he had been watching a lot of daytime television while he was home alone and had a bunch of those corny phrases lined up. When JARVIS saw Stane in  _ his  _ room he dropped all of the tools that he had been holding, shrieking as he rolled himself behind the bed. He was worried that he had come back to purchase or steal him. 

“Please don’t hurt me… please don’t hurt me… please don’t hurt me…” JARVIS mumbled behind the bed. 

“Ignore JARVIS,” Tony said quickly, directing Stane’s attention to the large exoskeleton that was standing beside his bed. “This is what I have done so far, all I have to really do is add the armor, and the defenses.” 

Stane’s jaw dropped, he didn’t expect Tony to have this done yet due to the fact he had just recently gotten back from the hospital. Tony claimed that he had finished this in a day and a half. “Do you have the blueprints?” He asked Tony who already had it out and ready. “This is going to be an amazing thing, kiddo. You don’t know how proud I am of you.” He put a hand on Tony’s shoulder. 

“You… you are? Thanks.” It was an extremely uncommon thing for Tony to hear, but there was a new sense of pride building up in him. Not the normal ‘I’m smarter and better than you’ ego, but an actual sense of accomplishment. 

“I’ll check back in with you in about a week? That sound good?” 

“Sounds great. I’ll see you then.”

Tony waited until he heard the front door shut before coming out of his room with JARVIS following behind him. Waiting for him in the living room was Steve and he didn’t look too happy with him. 

“What?”

“Do you honestly think that working with that guy is such a good idea?” Was all that Steve said. 

“Wh- What do you mean?”

“He’s just… bad news, Tony.”

Tony scoffed. “Yeah, says you. You’re not the one working on armor. You don’t know what opportunities it’ll open for me.” 

Steve grunted. “Fine. Do whatever you want.”

* * *

 

There was something off about Clint’s text message to Nat, there was a small pit of anxiety in her stomach as she made it up towards his dorm room. All he sent was:  _ Need to talk. Come to dorm.  _ She had a strong feeling about what this was going to be about, but she wasn’t ready for the unpleasant conversation that was about to come. 

Even though she wasn’t ready for this type of conversation, if it was what she thought it was going to be she had to agree on it. 

With a long sigh, Nat finally knocked on Clint’s dorm room. What was only about a minute or less felt more like an hour due to the slight anxiety and her heart slamming against her chest. Her ears perked up, pulling her out of her thoughts when she heard the door knob finally moved, opening the door to reveal Clint standing there with a worried look on his face. 

“Hey,” he said awkwardly.

“Hey…” She replied with a small shrug.

“Come in and talk?” He moved out of the way so Nat could get past. He closed the door behind her, taking a deep breath in then letting it go. 

“What’s up?” She asked.

“Natasha, I think…” He looked away. “I think we should just be friends…” 

That was exactly what she expected to happen. Even though it was expected it still hurt to hear those words. They’ve been through so much together just for it to end like this. Even though she did agree that this was a change that they needed to take. 

“I… think that sounds best,” she said quietly. 

“We good though, right?” He held out his fist. 

Even though Nat’s heart was shattered, a small smile crossed her lips as she bumped fists with his. So much has happened that had lead up to this moment, it was almost as if they both agreed on this decision before they both actually made it. It still both hurt them greatly. 

“I’ll see you later,” Nat said with a small wave as she left the dorm room without waiting for Clint to say anything else. 

As the door closed behind her, tears fell from her eyes in a quiet sob. She really wanted to talk to somebody about what happened, she almost caught herself texting Clint about the breakup but she couldn’t talk about it with him. Too weird. She knew who to talk to. 

Luckily for Nat, Bruce’s dorm was in the same building just on a different floor. Two floors above Clint’s, so she couldn’t talk about it all she wanted without fear that he could hear them through the thin walls. Nat knocked on the door with her palm instead of her fist because she couldn’t take waiting to talk anymore. 

She was tapping her foot impatiently waiting for Bruce to open the door. “Hey Nat, what’s-” Bruce didn’t even get to finish his sentence before Nat walked into his dorm room. Thankfully he lived alone so she didn’t have to worry about that either. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?” He watched as his friend sat on the couch, makeup and tears were running down her face. 

“I just… need someone to talk to,” she said inbetween sobs. 

“Sure. What’s on your mind?” Bruce asked, sitting next to her. He handed her a box of tissues. 

Nat took a tissue, dabbing her eyes with it. “Clint and I broke up,” she answered quickly. 

“Oh… I’m really sorry to hear that. Are you going to be okay?” 

Nat shrugged. “I mean, it wasn’t too much of a surprise.”

“What do you mean? You two always seemed so happy together.”

“We were. We just… felt and acted like friends towards each other than anything else? You feel me? So we were kinda drifting apart, and agreed that we would stay friends but it still hurts, y’know?” 

Bruce nodded slowly, trying to collect his own thoughts on this. “This, uhh… may not be the best time to say this…” Nat raised an eyebrow to this. “But… Nat, I have… feelings… for you.” 

She looked down at the tissue in her lap. Today was certainly a rollercoaster. “That’s really sweet, Bruce.” Reaching over, Nat gave Bruce a quick kiss and grabbing his hands. Bruce’s face turned extremely red from this, he was totally caught off guard. “Just give me some time and I promise we’ll talk more about this. Okay?” 


	20. Chapter 20

Summer was supposed to be the time in everyone who was in school’s time to relax and have some major fun. Well, supposed to is the key term here. Loki had been visiting Thor for the entire three months of summer. See, the only reason that Loki was visiting was because he was going into his senior year of high school, but he had already made the choice that he wasn’t going to go to college. He thought that he was too good for college and that he would fine on his own with getting a great job without a college degree. Their parents made Loki hang out with Thor that summer to hopefully give him the extra push he needed to change his stubborn mind to go to college instead. 

However, that didn’t go over so well. Thor kept trying to get Loki to go out on the college campus to show him alone and to show him all the great things, but it seemed like Loki didn’t want to leave the dorm room, in fact, he spent the majority of the time in bed sleeping. Even though Thor had been trying to keep his head held high, trying to push through the frustrated that his little brother was causing him. There was nothing more that he wanted than to show him that college wasn’t all that bad, but, in fact, was a great time for anyone if they put themselves out there. Summertime was winding down to just a few days, so Thor wasn’t done trying yet.       

Loki had managed to get up before noon, he was now sitting at the small dining table setting in between the kitchen and the living room. He had just poured himself some cereal, staring at the wall across from him through blurry eyes. It was quiet, except for the thumping around you could hear from the people living in the dorm above Thor’s. Other than that it was rather peaceful. 

“Loki!” Thor’s deep voice boomed through the room.

Aaand now it wasn’t. Loki’s eye twitched, looking over his shoulder to see that his older brother had just woken up. Great. That peacefulness lasted, what? About five minutes? 

“Good morning…” Loki mumbled, looking back down at his bowl of cereal that was almost empty besides the milk. “Is what normal people say.” 

“I was hoping that my tour throughout the summer was enough for you to change your mind about attending college,” Thor said as he sat across from his brother. 

“Wait… this is why I had to come here for the whole summer instead of hanging out with my friends?”

“Mom said you didn’t have any friends.” Thor added in quickly, causing Loki to groan loudly. “But, yes, this is why you had to stay here. I tried everything I could to get you to change your mind.”

Loki hummed, tapping his spoon against the bowl. “Nope. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind.”

“Well, of course not! You spent your entire trip here asleep!” There was a heavy silence between them. “Remember how in the summers back in middle school when we’d invite our friends over to the house to hang out poolside?”

“You mean  _ your  _ friends?” Loki hissed at him. “Mom always made me go out to socialize, remember?” 

“Which was good for you, you spent too much time on your computer.” Loki let out a sigh, slumping in his seat. “Or that year when we went to the lake the celebrate 4th of July a few years back?” 

Loki hummed, drumming his fingers on the table. “I didn’t go on that trip, remember? I wasn’t allowed to go because I was grounded for my poor grades.”

“Huh... I swore you were there with us…” 

“Look, you can stop.”

“Stop? Stop what?” 

Loki motioned towards him with a disgusted look on his face. “Trying to dress up our childhood to be nothing but perfect. Well, yours might have been.”

“What are you talking about? We had a good childhood.” 

Scoffing, Loki rolled his eyes. “Like I said, your might have been. Mine was filled with neglect. Dad either didn’t give in to any of my interests or he punished me severely. Have you ever failed a class in high school?” 

“Well, of course, everyone fails a class at least once.”

“And did dad ever punish you for it?”

“Erm…” A part of Thor really wanted to find some memory where he had gotten in trouble for having a low grade to prove to Loki that he wasn’t being singled out, but nothing was coming to mind. He could’ve lied, but that wasn’t how he was. “No,” he finally answered, “he just told me to try harder next time.” 

“See? He gave you nothing, but my first time failing he made me stay home from a family trip.” 

“Well…” Okay, there was no way he could make up an excuse to cover up dad’s actions behind that one. “I’m not sure what to say now.”

“Of course not.” 

Loki stood up from the table and started to head towards the door. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going out. What’d you like to know?” His hand brushed against the door handle, but before he could open it he felt his older brothers large hand grabbing onto his shoulder. “Get offa me!” He tried shrugging it away but Thor wasn’t going to give up easily. “Thor.”

“Mom said I had to keep an eye on you.”

“I’m not a child!” 

“You sure act like one.”

At first, Loki didn’t move a muscle. He was trying to get his thoughts together, to rationalize what was going on right now, unfortunately… that didn’t go over so well. He quickly turned around, his fist in the air. Thor’s mind couldn’t process what he was seeing all at once, so when he did realize that Loki planned on punching him it was too late. A loud  _ smack _ echoed through the dorm. Thor just stood there, stunned, as he wasn’t sure how to react to this. Was he supposed to punch him back? Or was he just supposed to let it happen? 

No. He wasn’t going to stand there and let his little brother punch him around like a punching bag. That wasn’t going to happen. 

It looked like Loki was about to go ahead to say something else, but before he could even start, Thor punched him back. Awkwardly, but it was a punch. 

They both stood there, looking at each other like they were deciding what to do. Shaking his head, he turned back around, trying to leave the dorm again, but Thor seriously wasn’t going to let that happen. He grabbed his arm, yanking him away from the door a little too hard. He accidently caused Loki to tumble back to the floor, looking up at his older brother who looked shocked at what he did himself. 

“I…”

He couldn’t even finish this apology before Loki sprung up, tackling Thor. He bang his head against the wall. Trying to recover, Loki was already on him, trying to throw punch after punch, but Thor held up his arms to block the punches so it didn’t do too much. Thor grabbed onto Loki’s wrists, stopping him from attacking him, he stood up still holding his wrists which was hard since he was squirming around trying to get free. 

“Stop!” Thor shoved him away again, but this time he was kept on his feet. “What’s your problem?!” 

“I want to leave. You’re not stopping me from leaving,” Loki said while trying to catch his breath. 

“You’re my brother, I love you and I don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

Loki chuckled. “Right. ‘Brother.’ I’m adopted, remember? You’re not my brother and you never were.” He shoved past Thor, leaving the dorm room without him stopping him due to the fact that he was shocked at what he heard.

* * *

 

Breakups were rough, especially if it was a long-term relationship that had lasted two, almost three years. Nat had firmly believed that she wasn’t going to find happiness again in a long time after she heard Clint tell her that it was over. Thankfully, she went over to Bruce’s to find some sort of comfort, which she did, but was honestly shocked to hear that he had a crush on her as well. As much as Bruce wanted to know what Nat thought about what he had told her, she said that she needed time to think about herself and her feelings before coming to any conclusion. Which was understandable, after a breakup people do crazy things to get back at their ex’s. Nat like Bruce, she really did, but she wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just going to be a fling because of what happened between her and Clint, but with living with Bruce for almost three months, she had come to a conclusion.

It was the middle of the day, but Nat and Bruce decided that since summer was almost coming to a close that it would be a perfect time to have a bad movie marathon on Netflix. They had both went to the little corner store beforehand to stock up on snacks. Snacks included: candy, popcorn, and lots of ice cream. They had covered up all the windows so no light was going to shine through so it felt like it was the middle of the night.

A few hours have passed and they had started their third movie of the… night? Day? Whatever. Taking a break from the crappy movies, they decided to watch  _ Beauty and the Beast.   _ Nat unpaused the movie when Bruce came back with a refill on both popcorn and icecream. 

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. She used Bruce’s lap as a place to lay her legs as they watched the movie together. “Oooh! I love this part!” She said before putting popcorn in her mouth. 

It was the part of the movie where Belle and the Beast were dancing in the ballroom without a care in the world.

“I do too,” Bruce said with a nod, “she can see past the beast and what’s truly within.” She looked up at him.

“Bruce…” She said slowly, pausing the movie again. “Remember how… you told me you had a crush on me?” 

His face turned red. “Y-yeah…”

“I’ve done some thinking…” She sat up on the couch, placing the ice cream bowl on the night stand next to the armrest of the couch. “You’ve been there for me when I was at a low point and I want to thank you for that. You’re a really sweet guy, and I wanted to let you know that… I like you too.”

Before Bruce could respond to that, Nat leaned in the small space between them and pressed her lips against his.

* * *

 

 Three days. It had been three days since Tony has come out of his room at all for any reason. Steve had tried to get him to come out, whether it be to watch a movie or a TV show, to eat, or just go outside in general, but nothing was working. Tony just refused to go anywhere, he was so close to finishing the armor and didn’t want to stop now. The only reason he ate at all was if Steve forced him to eat, and the only reason he slept was if he passed out from exhaustion. During the summer he did go out with the rest of their friends, but now he was isolating himself again and it wasn’t healthy at all.

There was a knock at Tony’s door, it slowly opened where Steve stood in the doorway. He watched Tony for a bit, who was sleeping on the floor with a wrench still in his hand. Sleeping? No. More like passed out. 

With a frustrated sigh, Steve closed Tony’s bedroom door. He decided that he should probably go back to the college bookstore to get the missing textbook that he still needed. The store was out of stock of that textbook last time he went in there and kept forgetting to go pick it up. Well, might as well since nothing else was going to go on that day. 

Walking there wasn’t bad at all, in fact, Steve liked going out on walks, so it didn’t really matter. There were quite a few other students wandering around on campus, either looking for their classes as first year students, or students trying to quickly scramble to get all the textbook they needed for class last minute. 

Surprisingly, the bookstore wasn’t all that busy. It was probably helpful that they held the textbook there for Steve to come pick it up whenever he was able to get down there. After paying for it and left the small store, he saw a guy with long black hair and a prosthetic arm looking down at a piece of paper in his hand. He looked lost while looking for his classes. Clearly he was a new student. 

“Do you need help?” Steve said as he walked up to the guy. When the guy stopped to look up at him, he knew that face anywhere. Way back then, he had a friend in middle school who he called Bucky. The were best friends until Steve had to move to a different school due to the fact that his father had died. 

“No… I think I got it,” Bucky said, a small smile tugging at his lips awkwardly before starting to walk off again.

“Wait, don’t I know you?” Steve called back at him, in case it wasn’t Bucky and would’ve been an awkward situation. “Your name is…” He was going to say Bucky, but as a childhood nickname Bucky may not have remembered it. “James, right?” 

Bucky looked confused, as if he never seen this guy before in his life. “Um… Yeah? How’d you know that?”

“We went to middle school together. We were best friends, my name’s Steve. Steve Rogers.”

Bucky slowly shook his head as if he honestly couldn’t remember the man standing in front of him was. “I… I don’t think I know you…” He said before walking off again.

Well, that was an awkward situation either way. 


End file.
